THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
5•1#•1 
 
 THE 
 
 MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 TRANSLATED 
 WITH INTRODUCTORY AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 J. A. STEWART, M.A. 
 
 STUDENT AND TUTOR 0Γ CHRIST CHURCH AND WHITE'S PROFESSOR 
 
 OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD ; 
 
 HON. LL.D., EDINBURGH 
 
 iLottUon 
 MACMILLAI^ AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1905 
 
 All rights reserved 
 

β35Έ 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 The object of this volume is to furnish the reader with material 
 for estimating the characteristics and influence of Plato the 
 Mythologist, or Prophet, as distinguished from Plato the 
 Dialectician, or Eeasoner. 
 
 In order to effect this special object within a reasonable 
 space, it was necessary to extract the Myths from the Dialogues 
 in which they occur, with only the shortest possible indication 
 of the Context in each case, and to confine the Observations 
 to the Myths as individual pieces and as a series. The reader, 
 therefore, must not expect to find in the Observations on, say, 
 the Phaedo Myth or the Phaedrus Myth a Study of the Phaedo 
 or the Phaedrus. 
 
 The Greek text printed opposite the Translations and 
 followed by them throughout, except in a few places where 
 preferred readings are given in footnotes, is that of Stallbaum's 
 Platonis Opera Omnia Uno Volumine Comprehensa (1867). 
 
 I owe a large debt of gratitude to two friends for help 
 received. 
 
 Professor J. S. Phillimore read all the Translations through 
 in proof with the most friendly care ; and errors which may be 
 detected in these Translations will, I feel sure, turn out to be 
 in places where, from some cause or other, I may have failed 
 to make proper use of his suggestions. 
 
 The other friend who• helped me, Frederick York Powell, 
 is gone. A few weeks before his last illness began to cause 
 serious anxiety to his friends, he read through all the 
 
 948 
 
νί THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Translations in manuscript up to the Phaedrus Myth, inclusive, 
 and I read to him nearly the whole of the Introduction, and 
 also other parts, especially those relating to the Theory of 
 Poetry. The help he then gave me by his suggestive and 
 sympathetic discussion of various points closed a long series of 
 acts of friendship on which I shall always look back with a 
 feeling of deep gratitude. 
 
 J. A. STEWART, 
 
 Oxford, December 1904. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTEODUCTION 
 
 1. The Platonic Drama — Two elements to be distinguished in it: Argumentative 
 
 Conversation and Myth ..... Pages 1-4 
 
 2. General remarks on μυθολογία, or Stpry-tellino^ — Primitive Story-telling 
 
 described as άρθρωττολοΎία καΐ ^'ipoXoyia — Stories, or Myths, are (1) Simply 
 Anthropological and Zoological ; (2) Aetiological ; (3) Eschatological — A 
 Myth, as distinguished from an Allegory, has no Moral or Other- 
 meaning ........ 4-20 
 
 3. Plato's Myths distinguished from Allegories — To what experience, to what 
 
 " Part of the Soul," does the Platonic Myth appeal ? To that part which 
 expresses itself, not in "theoretic judgments," but in "value-judgments," 
 or rather "value-feelings" — The effect produced in us by the Platonic 
 Myth is essentially that produced by Poetry ; "Transcendental Feeling," 
 the sense of the overshadowing presence of "That which was, and is, and 
 ever shall be," is awakened in us — Passages from the Poets, quoted to 
 exemplify the production of this effect .... 20-39 
 
 4. ' ' Transcendental Feeling " explained genetically as the reflection in Conscious- 
 
 ness of the Life of the "Vegetative Part of the Soul," the fundamental 
 principle in us, and in all living creatures, which silently, in timeless 
 sleep, makes the assumption on which the whole rational life of Conduct 
 and Science rests, the assumption that "Life is worth living," that there is 
 a Cosmos, in which, and of which, it is good to be — "Transcendental 
 Feeling " is thus Solemn Sense of Timeless Being, and Conviction that 
 Life is good, and is the beginning and end of Metaphysics — It is Avith the 
 production of the first of these two phases of "Transcendental Feeling" 
 that the Platonic Myth, and Poetry generally, are chiefly concerned — 
 The Platonic Myth rouses and regulates this mode of "Transcendental 
 Feeling " for the use of Conduct and Science . . . 39-42 
 
 5. The Platonic Myth rouses and regulates "Transcendental Feeling" by 
 
 (1) Imaginative Representation of Ideas of Reason," and (2) Imaginative 
 Deduction of "Categories of the Understanding" and "Moral Virtues" 
 — Distinction between "Ideas" and "Categories" implicit in Plato — 
 Kant's distinction explained — Why does Plato employ Myth when he 
 "represents" Ideas of Reason, Soul, Cosmos, God, and when he 
 " deduces " Categories of the Understanding and Moral Virtues ? 42-51 
 
 6. Plato's treatment of the " Idea of God " .... 51-60 
 
viii THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 7. Plato's treatment of the ''Idea of Soul" — Agnosticism of Plato's day with 
 
 regard to the Immortality of the Soul — Influence of Orphic Belief as felt 
 by Pindar and Plato — Plato's Eschatological Myths plainly reproduce the 
 matter of Orphic teaching .... Pages 60-71 
 
 8. Summary of Introductory Observations in the form of a defence of Plato 
 
 against a charge brought against him by Kant, Kritik d. reinen Vernunft, 
 Einleitung, § 3 — Plato's Myths (roughly distinguished as (1) representing 
 Ideas of Reason, or Ideals, and (2) deducing Categories, Faculties, 
 Virtues, i.e. tracing them back to their origins) will be taken in the 
 following order : (a) as representing Ideas of Reason, the Phaedo Myth, 
 the Gorgias Myth, the Myth of Er (the three Eschatological Myths par 
 excellence), the Foliticus Myth together with the Myth of the Golden Age, 
 the Protagoras Myth (Aetiological Myths), and the Discourse of Timaeus ; 
 (b) as chiefly concerned with the deduction of Categories or Virtues, the 
 Phaedrus Myth, the Meno Myth, and the Myth told by Aristophanes 
 and Discourse of Diotima in the Symposium ; (c) the Atlantis Myth 
 and the Myth of the Earth-born, which respectively represent the 
 Ideals and deduce the Categories of the Nation, as distinguished from 
 the Individual ....... 72-76 
 
 THE PHAEDO MYTH 
 
 Context of the Myth ....... 77 
 
 Translation ........ 79-93 
 
 Observations on the Phaedo Myth 
 
 1. Plato's method of "giving verisimilitude to Myth, by bringing it into conform- 
 
 ity with the " Modern Science " of his day, illustrated from the Phaedo, 
 and paralleled from Henry More .... 94-101 
 
 2. The subject of the last section further illustrated by reference to the parallel 
 
 between Plato's Geography of Tartarus and the "True Surface of the 
 Earth" and Dante's Geography of Hell, Purgatory, and the Earthly 
 Paradise — The parallelism between Plato and Dante dwelt on chiefly 
 with the view of suggesting the method by which we may best under- 
 stand the function of Myth in the Platonic Philosophy, the method of 
 sealing the impression made on us by the Myth of one great master 
 by the study of the Myth of another with whom we may happen to be 
 in closer sympathy ...... 101-113 
 
 3. The distinction between Dogma and Myth insisted upon by Socrates, 
 
 Phaedo, 114 d — "Moral Responsibility" the motif of the Phaedo 
 Myth ........ 113-114 
 
 THE GORGIAS MYTH 
 
 Context . . . . , . 115 
 
 Traiislation ........ 117-125 
 
CONTENTS ix 
 
 Observations on the Gorgias Myth 
 
 1. " Moral Responsibility " is the motif of the Gorgias Myth, as it is of the 
 
 Phaedo Myth — The Gorgias Myth sets forth, in a Vision of Judgment, 
 Penance, and Purification, the continuity and sameness of the Active, 
 as distinguished from the Passive, Self, the Self as actively developing its 
 native power under the discipline of correction, κ6λασί$, not as being the 
 mere victim of vengeance, τιμωρία — Death as Philosopher Pages 126-128 
 
 2. The mystery of the infinite difference between Vice with Large Opportunity 
 
 and Vice with Narrow Opportunity .... 129-130 
 
 3. Observations on Tablets affixed to the Judged Souls, on the Meadow of 
 
 Judgment, and on the Three Ways .... 130-132 
 
 THE MYTH OF ER 
 
 Context . . . . . . . . 133 
 
 Translation ........ 135-151 
 
 Observations on the Myth op Er 
 
 1. Cosmography and Geography of the Myth .... 152-154 
 
 2. Dante's Lethe and Eunoe taken in connection with the Orphic Ritual and 
 
 Mythology, to which Plato is largely indebted for his account of the 
 Soul's καθάρσια as a Process of Forgetting and Remembering . 154-161 
 
 3. More about the Cosmography and Geography of the Myth — The Pillar of 
 
 Light, the Spindle of Necessity, the Model of the Cosmos in the lap 
 of Necessity ....... 162-169 
 
 4. The great philosophical question raised and solved in the Myth, How to 
 
 reconcile " Free Will " with the " Reign of Law " . . 169-172 
 
 THE POLITICUS MYTH 
 
 Introductory Remarks ....... 173-174 
 
 Context ......... 175 
 
 Translation ........ 177-191 
 
 Translation of the Myth of the Golden Age .... 193-195 
 
 Observations on the Politicus Myth 
 
 1. Relation of the Politicus Myth to the " Science " of Plato's day . 196-197 
 
 2. Is Plato "in earnest" in supposing that God, from time to time, withdraws 
 
 from the government of the World ? . . . . 197-198 
 
 3. Resurrection and Metempsychosis .... 198-200 
 
 4. "The Problem of Evil" raised in the Politicus Myth — How does Plato 
 
 suppose the solution of tlis problem to be furthered by an Aetiological 
 Myth like that of the Politicus ? — The value of Aetiological Myth as 
 helping us to " solve " a " universal difficulty " as distinguished from a 
 "particular difficulty" — It helps us to "put by" the former kind of 
 
THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 difficulty— The Kalewala quoted to illustrate the function of Aetiological 
 Myth— The Story of the Birth of Iron— Transition from the Politkus 
 Myth to the "Creation Myths" strictly so called, the Protagoras Myth., 
 and the Discourse of Timaeus .... Pages 200-211 
 
 THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 
 
 CotUextof the Myth > ....... 212-213 
 
 Translation ........ 215-219 
 
 Observations on the Protagoras Myth 
 
 1. Is it a ** Platonic Myth," or only a " Sophistic Apologue " ? — It is a true Myth, 
 
 as setting forth a priori elements in man's experience . . 220-222 
 
 2. It sets forth the distinction between the "mechanical" and the " teleo- 
 
 logical " explanation of the World and its parts — It raises the question 
 discussed in Kant's Critique of Judgment . . . 222-226 
 
 3. Account given in the Myth of the Origin of Virtue as distinguished from 
 
 Art ....... . 226-228 
 
 4. A Sculptured Myth, the Prometheus Sarcophagus in the Capitoline 
 
 Museum ........ 228-229 
 
 5. The difference between Myth and Allegory — Sketch of the History of Alle- 
 
 gorical Interpretation — The interpreters of Homer and of Greek Mythology 
 — Philo— The Christian Fathers— The Neo - Platonists— Dante— Plato's 
 Allegory of the Cave (which is a Myth as well as an Allegory) — His Alle- 
 gory of the Disorderly Crew — Allegory and Myth compared with 
 Ritual ........ 230-258 
 
 THE TIMAEUS 
 
 Context ......... 259 
 
 Translation ........ 261-297 
 
 Observations on the Timaeus 
 
 1. General observations on its scope ..... 298-302 
 
 2. Purification and Metempsychosis ..... 302-304 
 
 3. On the Creation of Souls ...... 304-305 
 
 THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 
 
 Context of the Myth ....... 306-307 
 
 Translation ........ 309-335 
 
 Observations on the Phaedrus Myth 
 
 1. Preliminary ........ 335 
 
 2. The Phaedrus Myth as giving a " Deduction " of the Categories of the Under- 
 
 standing—But it also sets forth the Ideas of Reason . . 337-339 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 3. The doctrines of Άνάμνησι^, 'Έρω$, Immortality— The Meno Myth translated, 
 
 and compared with the Fhaedrus Myth — In what sense is the "Doctrine 
 of Ideas" ''mythical"?. .... Pages 339-349 
 
 4. The Number 729 ...... . 349-350 
 
 5. The celestial, or astronomical, mise en βοέηβ of the "History of the Soul" in 
 
 the Fhaedrus Myth, and the importance of that mise en sc^ne for sub- 
 sequent philosophical and religious thought down to Dante . 350-381 
 
 6. Poetic Inspiration ....... 382-395 
 
 THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 
 Context of the Myths ....... 397 
 
 I.— THE MYTH TOLD BY ARISTOPHANES 
 Translation ........ 399-407 
 
 General Observations on the Myth 
 and comparison with the Zagreus Myth and with Rabelais . . 408-413i 
 
 IL— THE DISCOURSE OF DIOTIMA 
 Translation ........ 415-427 
 
 Observations on the Discourse of Diotima 
 
 1. The Discourse at once an Allegory and a Myth — May be taken as a study of 
 
 the Prophetic Temperament — The nature of Prophecy . . 428-434 
 
 2. The History of the Doctrine of Daemons . . . . 434-450 
 
 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON MYTHS 
 
 which set forth the Nation's, as distinguished from 
 THE Individual's, Ideals and Categories 
 
 Myths in which we have the spectacle of a Nation's life, (a) led on by a Vision 
 of its Future, (&) conditioned by its Past. These are (a) the Atlantis 
 Myth in the Timaeus and Critias, which, taken in connection with the 
 account of the Ideal State in the Jiepublic, sets forth the Vision of an 
 Hellenic Empire ; {b) the Myth of the Earth-born in the Republic 451-456 
 
 THE ATLANTIS MYTH 
 
 Υ Abbreviated translation, or rendering ..... 457-464 
 
 Observations on the Atlantis Myth 
 The Geology and Geography of*the Myth . , . . 465-469 
 
xii THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 THE MYTH OF THE EARTH-BORN 
 
 Translation ....... Pages 471-473 
 
 Note on the Myth of the Earth-born ..... 474 
 
 CONCLUSION— THE MYTHOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS 
 OF THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 
 
 The "Cambridge Platonists" represent Plato the Mythologist, or Prophet, 
 rather than Plato the Dialectician, or Reasoner, and in this respect are 
 important for the understanding of our modern English '* Idealists," who, 
 it is contended, are " Platonists" of the same kind as Cudworth and his 
 associates ....... 475-519 
 
INTKODUCTION 
 
 1. The Platonic Dkama 
 
 The Platonic Dialogue may be broadly described as a Drama 
 in which speech is the action/ and Socrates and his companions 
 are the actors. The speech in which the action consists is 
 mainly that of argumentative conversation in which, although 
 Socrates or. another may take a leading part, yet everybody has 
 his say. The conversation or argument is always about matters 
 which can be profitably discussed — that is, matters on which 
 men form workaday opinions which discussion may show to 
 be right or wrong, wholly or in part. 
 
 But it is only mainly that the Platonic Drama consists in 
 argumentative conversation. It contains another element, the 
 Mythj which, though not ostensibly present in some Dialogues, 
 is so striking in others, some of them the greatest, that we « 
 are compelled to regard it, equally with the argumentative 
 conversation, as essential to Plato's philosophical style. 
 
 The Myth is a fanciful tale, sometimes traditional, some- 
 times newly invented, with which Socrates or some other 
 interlocutor interrupts or concludes the argumentative conv ersa- 1 
 tion in which the movement of the Drama mainly consists. ' 
 
 The object of this work is to examine the examples of the 
 Platonic Myth in order to discover its function in the organism 
 of the Platonic Drama. That Myth is an organic part of the 
 Platonic Drama, not an added ornament, is a point about 
 which the experienced reader of Plato can have no doubt. 
 The Sophists probably ornamented their discourses and made 
 
 ^ Cf. Cratylics, 387 B. to Xiyetv μία tLs έστι των τράζεων. 
 
 • Β 
 
THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 
 f 
 
 ^^ 
 
 them more interesting by the insertion of illustrative fables or 
 allegories like the Choice of Hercules ; ^ but the Platonic Myth 
 is not illustrative — it is not Allegory rendering pictorially 
 results already obtained by argument. Of this the experienced 
 reader of Plato is well aware. He feels when the brisk debate 
 is silenced for a while, and Socrates or another great interlocutor 
 opens his mouth in Myth, that the movement of the Philosophic 
 Drama is not arrested, but is being sustained, at a crisis, on 
 another plane. The Myth bursts in upon the Dialogue with 
 a revelation of something new and strange i the narrow, matter- 
 of-fact, workaday experience, which the argumentative con- 
 versation puts in evidence, is suddenly flooded, as it were, 
 and transfused by the inrush of a vast experience, as from 
 another world—*' Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the 
 place whereon thou standest is holy ground." 
 
 It is in the mouth of the dramatic Socrates that Plato puts 
 those Myths best fitted to fill us with wondering surmise and 
 make us think — the so-called Eschatological Myths. It may 
 be that here Plato represents a trait of the real Socrates. 
 Socrates* method of argumentative conversation, it is fully 
 recognised, determined the dialogue-form of the Platonic 
 writings. It may be that also the introduction of Myths, at 
 least of the Eschatological Myths — Myths distinguished by 
 great impressiveness of matter and style — was suggested to 
 Plato by something in the real Socrates. The personal influence 
 of Socrates worked as a vital principle in Plato's mind, and 
 bodied itself forth in Socratic dramas — plays in which, as I 
 have said, Socrates and his companions are the actors, and 
 philosophical discourse is the action. Any element, then, in 
 the Platonic writings which the experienced reader finds of 
 great dramatic moment — and the Myth is such — is likely to 
 represent some striking trait in the person and influence of the 
 real Socrates. In the Myths put into his mouth Socrates 
 prophesies — sets forth, by the aid of imaginative language, the 
 fundamental conditions of conduct and knowledge. He 
 " prophesies," and his hearers listen spellbound. That Socrates 
 possessed what is now called mesmeric influence is very likely. 
 The comparison of his influence (in ordinary debate) with that 
 
 Ϊ See Grote's Plato, ii. 38, note e. 
 
INTEODUCTION 3 
 
 ί •>.>,.., •. '. • •■ 
 of the electric fish, η θαΧαττία νάρκη} may be thought to 
 imply as much ; while his familiar spirit, or Βαιμόνιον, must 
 be taken as evidence of "abnormality."^ I venture to offer 
 the suggestion, for what it may be worth, that the Platonic 
 Myths, in manner if not always in matter, represent (directly 
 as spoken by " Socrates " himself, indirectly as spoken by 
 "Timaeus," " Critias," "Protagoras," "the Eleatic Stranger") 
 certain impressive passages in the conversation of the real 
 Socrates, when he held his hearers spellbound by the magnetism 
 of his face and speech. Be this as it may. Myth distinguished 
 once for all by weight and ring from Allegory ^ is an essential 
 element of Plato's philosophical style; and his philosophy 
 cannot be understood apart from it.* 
 
 The main plan of this work is to append to the English 
 translation of each of the Platonic Myths observations and 
 notes relating specially to that Myth itself. Each Myth is a 
 unique work of art, and must be dealt with individually in its 
 own context. But I hope that the general effect of these 
 special observations will be to leave the reader, at the end, 
 with an adequate impression of the significance of Myth, first 
 in Plato's philosophy, and then in present-day thought. 
 
 Before beginning, however, to carry out the main plan of 
 
 1 Meno, 80 A. 
 
 ^ Hegel {Gesch. d. Philos. ii. 94-101) regards the δαιμόνων as a "magnetic" 
 plienomenon, physiologically explicable. C. R. Volquardsen {Das Odmonium des 
 Socrates und seine Interpreten, Kiel, 1862) holds (pp. 58 and 71) that it cannot 
 be explained by any law of anthropology or physiology, but is a "singular" 
 phenomenon. Zeller {Socrates and the Socratic Schools, pp. 72-79, Eng. Transl.) 
 concludes that it is "a vague apprehension of some good or ill result following on 
 certain actions." 
 
 F. W. H. Myers {Human Personality, ii. 95 AT. ) cites the δαιμόνων of Socrates 
 "as an example of wise automatism ; of the possibility that the messages which 
 are conveyed to the supraliminal mind from subliminal strata of the personality 
 — whether as sounds, as sights, or as movements — may sometimes come from far 
 beneath the realm of dream and confusion, — from some self whose monitions 
 convey to us a wisdom profounder than we know" (p. 100). Against L. F. Lelut 
 {Du Demon de Socrate, 1856), who argues from the records of the δαιμόνων in 
 Xenophon and Plato that Socrates was insane, Myers contends (p. 95) that "it 
 is now possible to give a truer explanation ; to place these old records in juxta- 
 position with more instructive parallels ; and to show that the messages which 
 Socrates received were only advanced examples of a process which, if supernormal, 
 is not abnormal, and which characterises that form of intelligence which we 
 describe as genius." Dr. H. Jackson's article on "the δαιμόνων σημβΐον of Socrates" 
 in the Journal of Philology (vol. x. pp. 232 if.) may also be referred to, and 
 Kiihner's Prolegomena (v. de Socratis δαιμονίφ) to his edition of Xen. Mem. 
 
 ^ See infra, p. 15 and pp. 230 if. 
 
 * Zeller's Plato, pp. 159-163 (Eng. Transl.), may be read in connection with 
 this and preceding paragraph!! 
 
4 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 this work, I will offer some preliminary remarks on μύθοΧο^^ία, 
 or story- telling in general, in the course of which I hope to 
 indicate what I conceive to be the ground of Plato's methodical 
 employment of it in philosophy. 
 
 2. General Remarks on μ,υθοΧοψα^ or Story-telling. 
 Myth distinguished from Allegory 
 \— 
 
 It is a profound remark that Imagination rather than 
 
 Keason makes the primary difference between man and brute.^i 
 
 ^The brute lives mainly among the immediate impressions of 
 
 sense. The after-images of these impressions are evidently of 
 
 \ . little account in his life, being feeble and evanescent.^ 
 
 ©Tit man lives a double life — not only, with the brute, in 
 Γ" the narrow world of present sensations, but also in a wide world 
 of his own, where his mind is continually visited and re- visited 
 by crowds of vivid, though often grotesque and grotesquely 
 combined, images of past sense-impressions. It is in this wide 
 wonder-world of waking dream, which encompasses the narrow 
 familiar world of his present sense-impressions, that man begins 
 his human career. It is here that the savage and the child 
 begin to acquire what the brute has no such opportunity of 
 beginning to acquire, and never does acquire, — a sense of vast 
 I environment and of the long course of time. rPhis waking 
 dream, which constitutes so great a part of man's childish 
 experience, probably owes much of its content to the dreams 
 of sleep. Some of the lower animals, as well as man, seem to 
 have dreams in sleep. But man, we may suppose, differs from 
 
 ^ "In the lower stages of civilisation Imagination, more than Reason, dis- 
 tinguishes men Irom the animals ; and to banish art would be to banish thought, 
 to banish language, tobanislithe expression of all truth." — Jowett, Dialogices of 
 Plato, Introduction to the Republic, p. clxiv. 
 
 r^ 2 "At the proper season these birds (swallows) seem all day long to be im- 
 
 pressed with the desire to migrate ; their habits change ; they become restless, 
 are noisy, and congregate in flocks. Whilst the mother -bird is feeding, or 
 brooding over her nestlings, the maternal instinct is probably stronger than the 
 migratory ; but the instinct which is the more persistent gains the victory, and 
 at last, at a moment when her young ones are not in sight, she takes flight and 
 deserts them. When arrived at the end of her long journey, and the migratory 
 instinct has ceased to act, what an agony of remorse the bird would feel if, from 
 being endowed with great mental activity, she could not prevent the image 
 constantly passing through her mind of her young ones perishing in the bleak 
 north from cohl and hunger " (Darwin, The Descent of Man, part i. chap. iv. 
 
 . p. 173, ed. 1901). 
 
INTEODUCTION 5 
 
 the lower animals in remembering his dreams. And he can 
 tell them, and improve upon them in the telling, whether they 
 be dreams of sleep or waking dreams — indeed, he must tell 
 them. They are so vivid that they will out ; he cannot keep 
 them to himself; and, besides, the telling of them gives what 
 may be called secondary expression and relief to certain 
 emotions and feelings, which in the case of the brute find only 
 primary expression in acts within the world of sense-impres- 
 sions. In the case of man, fear, confidence, anger, love, hate, 
 curiosity, wonder, find not only primary expression in acts 
 within the world of sense-experience, but also secondary and, 
 as it were, dramatic expression in the adventures and doings 
 of the dream-world, all circumstantially told. It is impossible 
 to over-estimate the early debt which man owes to his love of 
 story-telling thus inspired and supplied with material. In 
 telling and listening to stories about the dream-world, man, in J 
 short, learns to think. The dream-world of the primitive *n 
 story-teller and his audience is a large, easy world, in which 
 they can move about freely as they like — in which they are 
 rid of the hard facts of the world of sense-experience, and can 
 practise their powers without hindrance on tractable material, 
 calling up images and combining them at will, as the story goes 
 on, and thus educating, in play, the capacity which, afterwards 
 applied to the explanation of the world of sense-experience, 
 appears as the faculty of constructive thought. The first 
 essays of this faculty are the so-called Aetiological Myths, 
 which attempt to construct a connection between the world of 
 sense-experience and the dream-world — which take the dream- 
 world as the context which explains the world of sense- 
 experience. Judged by the standard of positive science the 
 matter of the context supplied from the dream-world by the 
 mythopoeic fancy is in itself, of course, worthless ; but the 
 mind is enlarged by the mere contemplation of it; the habit 
 of looking for a context in which to read the sense-given is 
 acquired, and matter satisfactory to science is easily received 
 when it afterwards presents itself. The conceptual context of 
 science thus gradually comes to occupy the place once filled by 
 the fantastical context of the dream-world. But this is not 
 the only respect in which the mythopoeic fancy serves the 
 development of man. 1[f_it pr epares the way for the exercise 
 
6 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 of the scientific understanding, it also indicates limits within 
 which that exercise must be confined. This it does by- 
 supplying an emotional context, if the phrase may be used, 
 along with the fantastical context. The visions of the 
 mythopoeic fancy are received by the Self of ordinary 
 consciousness with a strange surmise of the existence, in 
 another world, of another Self which, while it reveals itself in 
 these visions, has a deep secret which it will not disclose. It 
 is good that a man should thus be made to feel in his heart 
 how small a part of him his head is — that the Scientific 
 Understanding should be reminded that it is not the Eeason — 
 the Part, that it is not the Whole Man. Herein chiefly 
 
 Llies the present value of Myth (or of its equivalent, Poetry, 
 Music, or whatever else) for civilised man. 
 
 ^ The stories which the primitive inhabitants of the dream- 
 world love to tell one another are always about the wonderful 
 adventures and doings of people and animals. '' ΚνθρωιτοΚοηία 
 tcuiX ΊκοόΚοηία^ may be• -taken as'^a-^ftlH description of these 
 atories. The adventures and doings happened " Once upon a 
 time " — " Long ago " — " Somewhere, not here " — that is preface 
 enough for the most improbable story, — it receives belief or make- 
 believe simply because it is very interesting — becau^ the animals 
 speak and behave like people, and everything else happens 
 topsy-turvy in a wonderful manner, and there is no lack of 
 bloodshed and indecency. If the story is not " very interesting," 
 i.e. not marvellous, gruesome, indecent, it does not carry belief 
 
 Ijor make-believe, and is not interesting at all. The attitude of 
 make-believe, which I have mentionecl, is worth the careful 
 attention of the psychologist. This is not the place to analyse 
 it.^ I will only say that it seems to me likely that it is very 
 often the attitude of the primitive story-teller and his audience. 
 The story may be very interesting to its teller and audience 
 without being believed. This is as true, I take it, of a grotesque 
 Zulu tale as of a modern novel written with due regard to 
 probability or a jeu d' esprit like Alice in Wonderland. But if 
 the story is very interesting, there will always be make-believe 
 
 * I hope that I may be pardoned for introducing two words which are not in 
 Liddell and Scott, but seem to be justified, in the sense in which I use them, by 
 Aristotle's άνθρωπολόΎο^ {Ε. Ν. iv. 3. 31)= "fond of personal talk." 
 
 2 Coleridge, referring to Lyrical Ballads, speaks of "that willing suspension 
 of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." 
 
INTEODUCTION 7 
 
 at least, and often serious, deliberate make-believe. It is in "Ή 
 the spirit of this serious make-believe that not only the little 
 girl talks about her dolls, but we ourselves read our Dante, or 
 make pilgrimages to places associated v^ith the events of great 
 fiction. The adventures of Kobinson Crusoe and the journey 
 of Dr. Johnson are followed with little difference in our sense 
 of actuality. The topography of the Inferno and that of the 
 Koman Forum are approached in much the same spirit by the 
 interested student in each case. These instances from civilised 
 experience may serve to show how vague the line must be 
 dividing belief from make-believe in the mind of primitive man 
 with his turbulent feelings and vivid imagination controlled by 
 no uniform standard of ascertained fact.^ His tendency is to 
 believe whatever he tells and is told. That he sometimes stops 
 short of belief at make-believe is, after all, a small matter. At 
 any rate, we may be sure that Nature in this case, as in all 
 other cases, does nothing that is superfluous — ovhev ττοιεΐ 
 irepuepyov ovBe μάτην ή φύσις. If make-believe serve Nature's 
 "purpose" as well as belief, which is more difficult, she will 
 take care that her protego stops at make-believe. Certain 
 stories, we assume, have to be wonderful or horrid up to a 
 certain pitch, in order to give full expression and relief to 
 feeling and imagination at a certain stage of development ; 
 and the belief without which these necessary stories could not 
 maintain themselves at all, we further assume, will be that 
 which comes easiest, i.e. make-believe. 
 
 It is plain that in proportion as stories are more 
 extravagantly wonderful or horrid, the more likely is make- 
 believe to be the attitude of tellers and hearers ; and that, where 
 this is the attitude, stories are likely to go on becoming more 
 and more extravagantly wonderful or horrid. / 
 
 This is one tendency which, however, is met by another." 
 When a wonderful story is often told and becomes very / 
 familiar, it comes to be believed more seriously ; and, in proper- j 
 tion as it is believed more seriously, it tends to disembarrass itself 
 more and more of the wilder improbabilities which pleased when 
 the attitude towards it was still that of make-believe. An im- 
 
 ^ Professor Tyler {Primitive Culture, i. 284) describes **u usual state of the 
 imagination among ancient and savage peoples" as "intermediate between the 
 conditions of a healthy prosaic modern citizen and a raving fanatic or a patient 
 in a fever-ward." * 
 
8 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 promptu 8tx)ry full of extravagant improbability and, it may be, 
 of revolting indecency is told about some one. When and if that 
 some one afterwards comes to be regarded, it may be on the sole 
 authority of this story itself, as a hero or god of the race, those 
 who revere him become ashamed of the old story about him. 
 They rationalise and moralise it, either leaving out the improb- 
 abilities and indecencies, and retaining the parts that are probable 
 and proper; or allegorising it,i.e. showing that the improbabilities 
 and indecencies are not to be regarded as historical facts, but to 
 be interpreted as figures of some philosophic or scientific or 
 religious doctrine favoured by the interpreters. Thus make- 
 believe accumulates material for the " higher criticism." 
 
 ^ΚνθρωττοΧο'^ία καν ZwoXoyia — " about people and animals " 
 — is a sufficient account of what story-telling always is and 
 why it is interesting. 
 
 1. Sometimes the story is about adventures and doings 
 which happened once upon a time, and left no results to en- 
 hance the interest which belongs to it intrinsically as a story 
 about people and animals. Such a story may be called 
 " Simply Anthropological and Zoological." 
 
 A very large elephant came and said, "Whose are those re- 
 markably beautiful children 1 " The child replied, " Unanana- 
 bosele's." The elephant asked a second time, " Whose are those 
 remarkably beautiful children ? " The child replied, " Unanana- 
 bosele's." The elephant said, " She built in the road on purpose, 
 trusting to self-confidence and superior power." He swallowed 
 them both, and left the little child. The elephant then went 
 away. 
 
 In the afternoon the mother came and said, " Where are the 
 children 1 " The little girl said, " They have been taken away by 
 an elephant with one tusk." Unanana-bosele said, "Where did 
 he put them ? " The little girl replied, " He ate them." Unanana- 
 bosele said, " Are they dead ? " The little girl replied, " No, I 
 do not know." 
 
 They retired to rest. In the morning she ground much maize, 
 and put it into a large pot with amasi, and set out, carrying a 
 knife in her hand. She came to the place where there was an 
 antelope ; she said, " Mother, mother, point out for me the elephant 
 which has eaten my children ; she has one tusk." The antelope 
 said, " You will go till you come to a place where the trees are 
 very high and where the stones are white." She went on. 
 
 She came to the place where was the leopard; she said 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 *' Mother, mother, point out for me the elephant which has eaten 
 my children." The leopard replied, "You will go on and on, and 
 come to the place where the trees are high and where the stones 
 are white." 
 
 She went on, passing all animals, all saying the same. When 
 she was still at a great distance she saw some very high trees, and 
 white stones below them. She saw the elephant lying under the 
 trees. She went on ; when she came to the elephant she stood 
 still and said, "Mother, mother, point out for me the elephant 
 which has eaten my children." The elephant replied, " You will 
 go on and on, and come to where the trees are high and where the 
 stones are white." The woman merely stood still, and asked again 
 saying, "Mother, mother, point out for me the elephant which has 
 eaten my children." The elephant again told her just to pass 
 onward. But the woman, seeing that it was the very elephant she 
 was seeking, and that she was deceiving her by telling her to go 
 forward, said a third time, " Mother, mother, point out for me the 
 elephant which has eaten my children." 
 
 The elephant seized her and swallowed her too. When she 
 reached the elephant's stomach, she saw large forests, and great 
 rivers, and many high lands ; on one side there were many rocks ; 
 and there were many people who had built their villages there ; 
 and many dogs and many cattle ; all was there inside the 
 elephant ; she saw, too, her own children sitting there. She gave 
 them amasi, and asked them what they ate before she came. They 
 said, " We have eaten nothing, we merely lay down." She said, 
 " Why did you not roast this flesh ? " They said, " If we eat this 
 beast, will it not kill us 1 " She said, " No ; it will itself die ; you 
 will not die." She kindled a great fire. She cut the liver, and 
 roasted it and ate with her children. They cut also the flesh and 
 roasted and ate. 
 
 All the people which were there wondered, saying, "Oh, forsooth, 
 are they eating, whilst we have remained without eating any- 
 thing 1 " The woman said, " Yes, yes. The elephant can be eaten." 
 All the people cut and ate. 
 
 And the elephant told the other beasts, saying, " From the time 
 I swallowed the woman I have been ill ; there has been a pain in 
 my stomach." The other animals said, "It may be, chief, it 
 arises because there are now so many people in your stomach." 
 And it came to pass after a long time that the elephant died. The 
 woman divided the elephant with a knife, cutting through a rib 
 with an axe. A cow came out and said, " Moo, moo, we at length 
 see the country." A goat came out and said, "Mey, mey, at 
 length we see the country." A dog came out and said, " At length 
 we see the country." And the people came out laughing and 
 saying, " At length we tee the country." They made the woman 
 
10 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 presents; some gave her cattle, some goats, and some sheep. 
 She set out with her children, being very rich. She went home 
 rejoicing because she had come back with her children. On her 
 arrival her little girl was there ; she rejoiced, because she Λvas 
 thinking that her mother was dead.^ 
 
 2. Sometimes the story is about doings and adventures 
 which produced interesting results which remain, and are 
 explained by means of these doings and adventures — as when 
 the shape of a hill is explained by the action of some giant or 
 wizard — " He cleft the Eildon Hills in three." This is the 
 Aetiological Story. It is not only interesting as a piece of 
 simple anthropology, — every story must have that intrinsic 
 interest, — but it satisfies what may be called the " scientific 
 curiosity " — the desire to know the causes of things. It sets 
 forth the cause. 
 
 To the class of Aetiological Stories belong those myths in 
 
 I which the creation of the heavens and earth as one whole 
 is set forth — the so-called Cosmological Myths ; also myths 
 which set forth the creation "of man, and the origin of his 
 faculties and virtues ; also Foundation Myths describing the 
 origin of society and of particular nations and cities, as well 
 as myths describing the invention of the arts and their 
 instruments ; and myths — a large and important section — 
 explaining the origin of ritual practices — the so-called Cultus 
 Myths ; and lastly, myths explaining topographical features 
 and the peculiarities of animals and plants. 
 
 The " scientific " curiosity which inspires these Aetio- 
 logical Stories is not idle. Curiosity, indeed, is never idle. 
 " To know the cause " is matter of much practical concern 
 to the savage as well as to the civilised man. If one knows 
 the cause one can control the effect. For example, to heal a 
 wound made by iron one must know the story of the origin of 
 iron. That story duly recited becomes the charm which will 
 heal the wound.^ Many Aetiological Myths doubtless have 
 their rise in the practice of magijc. 
 
 Let me illustrate the Aetiological Myth by giving examples 
 of its principal varieties, beginning with a Cosmological Myth 
 
 1 Nursei-y Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, Callaway, 1868, vol. i. 
 pp. 332 ff. 
 
 2 See infra, pp. 204 flF., where the Finnish Story of the Origin of Iron is given. 
 
INTEODUCTION 11 
 
 — the " Story of the Children of Heaven and Earth," written 
 down by Sir George Grey among the Maoris.^ 
 
 From Rangi, the Heaven, and Papa, the Earth, it is said, sprang 
 all men and things; but sky and earth clave together, and darkness 
 rested upon them and the beings they had begotten, till at last 
 their children took counsel whether they should rend apart their 
 parents or slay them. Then Tane-mahuta, father of forests, said 
 to his five great brethren, " It is better to rend them apart, and 
 let the heaven stand far above us, and the earth lie under our 
 feet. Let the sky become as a stranger to us, but the earth 
 remain close to us as our nursing mother." So Kongo -ma-tane, 
 god and father of the cultivated food of man, rose and strove to 
 separate the heaven and the earth ; he struggled, but in vain ; and 
 vain, too, were the efforts of Tangaroa, father of fish and reptiles, 
 and of Haumia-tikitiki, father of wild-growing food, and of Tu- 
 matauenga, god and father of fierce men. Then slow uprises 
 Tane-mahuta, god and father of forests, and wrestles with his 
 parents, striving to part them with his hands and arms. " Lo, he 
 pauses ; his head is now firmly planted on his mother the earth, 
 his feet he raises up and rests against his father the skies, he 
 strains his back and limbs with mighty efiOrt. Now are rent 
 apart Rangi and Papa, and with cries and groans of woe they 
 shriek aloud. . . . But Tane-mahuta pauses not ; far, far beneath 
 him he presses down the earth ; far, far above him he thrusts up 
 the sky." But Tawhiri-ma-tea, father of winds and storms, had 
 never consented that his mother should be torn from her lord, and 
 now there arose in his breast a fierce desire to war against his 
 brethren. So the Storm-god rose and followed his father to the 
 realms above, hurrying to the sheltered hollows of the boundless 
 skies, to hide and cling and nestle there. Then came forth his 
 progeny, the mighty winds, the fierce squalls, the clouds dense, 
 dark, fiery, wildly drifting, wildly bursting ; and in the midst 
 their father rushed upon his foe. Tane-mahuta and his giant 
 forests stood unconscious and unsuspecting when the raging 
 hurricane burst on them, snapping the mighty trees across, leaving 
 trunks and branches rent and torn upon the ground for the insect 
 and the grub to prey on. Then the father of storms swooped 
 down to lash the waters into billows Λvhose summits rose hke 
 clifi's, till Tangaroa, god of ocean and father of all that dwell 
 therein, fled afi'righted through his seas. His children, Ika-tere, 
 the father of fish, and Tu-te-wehiwehi, the father of reptiles, 
 
 ^ I give this myth as it is quoted from Grey's Polynesian Mythology (p. 1, 
 ff.) by'Prof. Tylor {Prim. Cult. i. 290 fF.). Mr A. Lang compares this myth, 
 and others like it found in Ii^jiia and China, with the Greek myth of the mutila- 
 tion of Uranus by Cronus {Custom and Myth, " The Myth of Cronus "). 
 
12 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 sought where they might escape for safety; the father of fish 
 cried, "Ho, ho, let us all escape to the sea;" but the father of 
 reptiles shouted in answer, " Nay, nay, let us rather fly inland," 
 and so these creatures separated, for while the fish fled into the 
 sea, the reptiles sought safety in the forests and scrubs. But the 
 sea-god Tangaroa, furious that his children the reptiles should 
 have deserted him, has ever since waged war on his brother Tane, 
 who gave them shelter in his woods. Tane attacks him in 
 return, supplying the off'spring of his brother Tu-matauenga, 
 father of fierce men, with canoes and spears and fish-hooks made 
 from his trees, and with nets woven from his fibrous plants, that 
 they may destroy withal the fish, the Sea-god's children ; and 
 the Sea-god turns in wrath upon the Forest-god, overwhelms his 
 canoes with the surges of the sea, sweeps with floods his trees and 
 houses into the boundless ocean. Next the god of storms pushed on 
 to attack his brothers, the gods and progenitors of the tilled field 
 and the wild; but Papa, the Earth, caught them up and hid them, 
 and so safely were these her children concealed by their mother 
 that the Storm-god sought for them in vain. So he fell upon the 
 last of his brothers, the father of fierce men, but him he could not 
 even shake, though he put forth all his strength. What cared 
 Tu-matauenga for his brother's wrath ? He it was who had 
 planned the destruction of their parents, and had shown himself 
 brave and fierce in war; his brethren had yielded before the 
 tremendous onset of the Storm-god and his progeny ; the Forest- 
 god and his off'spring had been broken and torn in pieces ; the 
 Sea-god and his children had fled to the depths of the ocean or 
 the recesses of the shore ; the gods of food had been in safe 
 hiding ; but man still stood erect and unshaken upon the 
 bosom of his mother Earth, and at last the hearts of the 
 Heaven and the Storm became tranquil, and their passion was 
 assuaged. 
 
 But now Tu-matauenga, father of fierce men, took thought how 
 he might be avenged upon his brethren who had left him unaided 
 to stand against the god of storms. He twisted nooses of the 
 leaves of the whanake tree, and the birds and beasts, children 
 of Tane the Forest-god, fell before him ; he netted nets from the 
 flax-plant, and dragged ashore the fish, the children of Tangaroa 
 the Sea -god ; he found in their hiding-place underground the 
 children of Rongo-ma-tane, the sweet potato and all cultivated 
 food, and the children of Haumia-tikitiki, the fern-root and all wild- 
 growing food ; he dug them up and let them wither in the sun. 
 Yet, though he overcame his four brothers, and they became his 
 food, over the fifth he could not prevail, and Tawhiri-ma-tea, the 
 Storm-god, still ever attacks him in tempest and hurricane, striving 
 to destroy him both by sea and land. It was the bursting forth 
 
INTEODUCTIOISr 13 
 
 of the Storm -god's wrath against his brethren that caused the dry 
 land to disappear beneath the waters : the beings of ancient days 
 who thus submerged the land were Terrible-rain, Long-continued- 
 rain, Fierce -hailstorms, and their progeny were Mist, and Heavy- 
 dew, and Light-dew ; and thus but little of the dry land was left 
 standing above the sea. Then clear light increased in the world, 
 and the beings who had been hidden between Eangi and Papa before 
 they were parted now multiplied upon the earth. " Up to this 
 time the vast Heaven has still ever remained separated from his 
 spouse the Earth. Yet their mutual love still continues : the soft 
 warm sighs of her loving bosom still ever rise up to him ascending 
 from the woody mountains and valleys, and men call these mists ; 
 and the vast Heaven, as he mourns through the long nights his 
 separation from his beloved, drops frequent tears upon her bosom, 
 and men seeing these term them dewdrops." 
 
 Another important variety of the Aetiological Myth — 
 the Cultus Myth — is well illustrated by Grote in the follow- 
 ing passage : ^ — 
 
 It was the practice to offer to the gods in sacrifice the bones 
 of the victim only, enclosed in fat ; how did this practice arise 1 
 The author of the Hesiodic Theogony has a story which explains 
 it.2 Prometheus tricked Zeus into an imprudent choice, at the 
 period when the gods and mortal men first came to an arrangement 
 about privileges and duties (in Mekong). Prometheus, the tutelary 
 representative of man, divided a large steer into two portions ; 
 on the one side he placed the flesh and guts, folded up in the 
 omentum and covered over with the skin ; on the other he put the 
 bones enveloped in fat. He then invited Zeus to determine which 
 of the two portions the gods would prefer to receive from mankind. 
 Zeus " with both hands " decided for and took the white fat, but 
 was highly incensed on finding that he had got nothing at the bottom 
 except the bones. Nevertheless the choice of the gods was now 
 irrevocably made ; they were not entitled to any portion of the 
 sacrificed animal beyond the bones and the white fat; and the 
 standing practice is thus plausibly explained. I select this as 
 one amongst a thousand instances to illustrate the genesis of 
 legend out of religious practices. In the belief of the people, the 
 event narrated in the legend was the real producing cause of the 
 practice ; but when we come to apply a sound criticism, we are 
 compelled to treat the event as existing only in its narrative 
 legend, and the legend itself as having been» in the greater number 
 
 ^ Grote's History of Greece, part i. chap. i. 
 2^esiod, Theog. 550-557. 
 
U THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 of cases, engendered by the practice,— thus reversing the supposed 
 order of production.^ 
 
 Let me complete my illustration of the Aetiological Myth 
 by giving the pretty Japanese story which accounts for the 
 physiological effect produced by tea : — 
 
 It is Daruna whom legend credits with the origin of tea. 
 Before he went off into his present trance he made another effort 
 at permanent contemplation, and had failed through falling asleep 
 at the end of the ninth year. When he awoke he was so vexed 
 at his eyelids for their drooping that he cut them off. No sooner 
 had they fallen to the ground than, lo ! they took root, sprouted, 
 and sent forth leaves. As the old monk looked in wonder, a disciple 
 of Buddha appeared and told him to breAv the leaves of the new 
 shrub and then drink thereof. Daruna plucked the leaves, which 
 now all the world knows as tea, did as the vision commanded him 
 to do, and has not slept a minute since.^ 
 
 3. From the Simply Anthropological Story and from the 
 Aetiological Story it is convenient to distinguish a third kind 
 of story, the Eschatological Story. Here the teller and his 
 audience are not concerned with the adventures and doings of 
 people once upon a time, long ago, but with adventures and 
 doings which they themselves must take part in aft er death, 
 like all who have gone before them. It is not to mere love 
 of " personal talk " or to mere " scientific curiosity " that the 
 Eschatological Story appeals, but to man's wonder, and fear, 
 and hope with regard to death. This seems to make a great 
 difference, and to justify us in putting the Eschatological 
 Myths in a class by themselves. Where men fear and hope, 
 they tend to believe strongly ; and if ritual practice is associ- 
 ated with their fear and hope^ more strongly. Hence we find 
 that Eschatological Myths as a class have more actuality, 
 more consistency and sobriety, and more dignity, than other 
 
 1 The reader who wishes to pursue the subject of the Cultus Myth maj' consult 
 Miss Harrison's Mythology and Monwnunts of Ancient Athens, pp. xxvi. tf., where 
 he will find a very interesting treatment of the story of the birth of Erichthonios 
 "as an instance of aetiological myth-making of a special kind, of a legend that 
 has arisen out of a ritual practice, the original meaning of which had become 
 obscured"; also Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites, pp. 20 ff"., where the 
 rule is laid down that "in the study of ancient religions we must begin, not with 
 Myth but with ritual and traditional usage" ; cf. p. ]6 — "The antique religions 
 had for the most part no creed ; they consisted entirely of institutions and 
 practices." 
 
 2 The Heart of Japan, by C. L. Brownell (1902), p. 197. 
 
INTKODUCTION 15 
 
 myths, in proportion as the belief given is, for these reasons, 
 stronger. If make-believe is enough for other myths, Eschato- 
 logical Myths demand genuine belief, and easily get it from 
 primitive man. It is in no spirit of make-believe that he 
 performs the rites for the departed, which he knows will be 
 performed one day for himself, when he shall have gone to the 
 other world of which the stories tell. 
 
 It is not always easy to assign a story to its class. The 
 cause of something that attracts notice may be found in some- 
 thing done by somebody in the course of adventures which 
 have already been recounted as being in themselves interest- 
 ing. A story which started as " Simply Anthropological," 
 being told from pure love of άνθρωττοΚοψα, may be annexed 
 by the scientific imagination and become Aetiological. And, 
 again, a story which started as Aetiological may easily forget 
 its original scientific inspiration and become a piece of simple 
 ανθρωπολογία. Lastly, the interest of Eschatology — of talk 
 about man's latter end — is so peculiar and engrossing that it 
 tends to compel into its service Simply Anthropological and 
 Aetiological Stories already in existence. The Fhaedrus Myth 
 may be mentioned as showing this tendency at work. 
 
 We have seen that in form every story of the dream- 
 world, to whichever of the three classes it belongs, is anthropo- 
 logical and zoological ; that it is about the adventures and 
 doings of people and animals — men and men-like beasts and V "^^ 
 
 gods; and that it is intrinsically interesting as a story, and ^<^<^^ ^ 
 receives belief, or, at any rate, make-believe. "We must now _ V"^^' ^ 
 add" thatit has no moral — i.e. the teller and his hearers do no t } 
 t hink of anything but the story itse lf. This is the criterion 
 ^ - ^yth as distinguished from Allegory or Parable : Myth 
 h as no moral or other meaning in the minds of those who 
 make it, and of those for whom it is made. It is a later ag e 
 w hich reads other meaning into it, when the improbability 
 and indecency of stories told by savage men provoke the 
 rationalising work of those who are unwilling to give up the 
 stories entirely, but cannot receiΛ^e them as they stand. The 
 stories which seem to need this work most, and on which it is 
 most effectually done, are apt to perish under the treatment 
 which they receive. Becoming transparent allegories or ful- 
 filled prophecies, they «cease to be interesting, and are soon 
 
r 
 
 16 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 r 
 
 \ 
 
 forgotten. But there stand out among the myths of the world 
 some which rationalism has not been able to destroy or even 
 impair. These, we may be sure, were the creations, not of 
 ordinary story-tellers, but of "'divine poets" and "inspired 
 prophets" — of genius, using, indeed, material supplied by 
 ordinary story-tellers, but transforming it in the use.^ Such 
 myths — chiefly Eschatological Myths, created and originally 
 received in the spirit of genuine belief, not of make-believe — 
 yield precious fruit to interpretation. But the interpretation 
 of a masterpiece of imagination, to be fruitful, must be 
 " psychological." The revival, in aify shape, must be eschewed 
 of that now formally discredited method which treated a 
 masterpiece of creative imagination as an allegory by which 
 the accepted dogma of the day might be supported, or as a 
 prediction to be fulfilled, if not already fulfilled, in some 
 particular event of history. Fruitful interpretation of a 
 masterpiece of creative imagination will consist in showing 
 the mind of its maker, and in so placing his creation before 
 our own minds by means of some accompaniment or rendering 
 — some parallel corroborative appeal to imagination and feeling 
 — that it does for us in our age what it did for him in his 
 age, making us pause in the midst of our workaday life, as 
 he paused in the midst of his, filled 
 
 With admiration and deep muse, to hear 
 Of things so high and strange. 
 
 Th e allegorical interpretation of old myth s (which were 
 made, it is hardly necessary to say, without thought of the 
 doctrine got out of them by the interpretation) dou btless sug- 
 gest ed the deliberate making of allegorical tale s and parables. 
 When their makers are men of genius, these tales are often 
 myths as well as allegories and parables. Such are Plato's 
 'ave and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which I shall consider 
 later with reference to this point.'^ 
 
 Aesop's Fables, again, though retaining much of the 
 
 * •' ΛΥβ must not be astonished if we come across myths which surprise us by 
 their ingenious direction, or even by their profound philosophy. This is often 
 the character of spontaneous products of the human mind. . . . The human 
 mind, when it works thus spontaneously, is a philosopher just as the bee is a 
 iraathematician." — Reville, Prolegomenes de VUistoire des Heligi&ns, Eng. Transl 
 »y Squire, p. 112. f > ε> 
 
 ^ See infra, "Excursus on Allegory," pp. 230 flF. 
 
 ys' 
 
INTEODUCTION 17 
 
 "anthropological and zoological" interest which belongs to 
 the African Beast-tale on which they were modelled, were 
 doubtless, for the most part, deliberately composed for the 
 sake of their morals or applications. 
 
 As the Beast-tale is rewritten " with a purpose " in Aesop's 
 Fables, so in the moral zoology of Physiologus even "The 
 Natural History of Animals" is rewritten and turned into 
 allegory.-^ The following, about the Lion, based on Physiologus, 
 occurs in a British Museum Bestiary (Codd. Eeg. 2 C. xii.) 
 quoted by Mann in his instructive work, der Bestiaire Divin 
 des Guillaume le Clerc (p. 37): — 
 
 " De natura leonis, hestiarum seu animalium regis. Etenim 
 Jacob benedicens filium suum Judam ait (Gen. 49. 9) : 
 ' Catulus leonis Judas filius mens, quis suscitabit eum ? ' 
 Fisiologus dicit tres naturales habere leonem. 
 
 " Prima : ambulat in montibus, et si contigerit, ut queratur 
 a venatoribus, venit odor venatoris et de cauda sua post tergum 
 cooperit vestigia sua quocumque ierit, ut secutus venator per 
 vestigia eius non inveniat cubile ejus, et capiat eum. Sic et 
 Salvator Noster 'spiritualis leo de tribu Juda, radix Jesse, 
 filius David' (Apoc. δ. 5), missus a superno patre, cooperuit 
 intelligentibus vestigia deitatis sue. Et hoc est : factus est 
 cum angelis angelus, cum archangelis archangelus, cum 
 thronis thronus, cum potestatibus potestas, donee descendit in 
 uterum virginis, ut salvaret hoc quod erraverat humanum 
 genus. Ex hoc ignorantes eum ascendentem ad patrem hi 
 qui sursum erant angeli, dicebant ad eos qui cum Domino 
 ascendebant (Ps. 24. 8 f.): 'Quis est iste rex glorie ? ' 
 Kesponderunt illi : ' Dominus virtutum ipse est rex glorie.' 
 
 ^ Physiologus, 6 φνσιο\^ο$, is a work, in its original Greek form, compiled at 
 Alexandria towards the end of the second century, consisting of chapters, in 
 each of which an animal, real or fabulous, (or a precious stone) is first described 
 in the manner of natural history (or rather, as if in that manner), and then pre- 
 sented as a type of Christian doctrine and life. After being translated into 
 Latin, Physiologus spread over the whole West, and versions of it were made 
 everywhere in the vulgar tongues — in Anglo-Saxon, Old English, Old High 
 German, Flemish, Icelandic, Proven9al, Old French, and Italian. In the East, 
 too, it appeared in Syrian, Armenian, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Slavonic versions. 
 After the Bible it was probably the most popular book throughout the Middle 
 Age. Examples of it — the so-called Bestiaries — are to be found in all the 
 libraries of Europe. See der Bestiaire Divin des Guillaume le Clerc {Franzosische 
 Studieuy 1888), by Max Friedr. Mann, pp. 17 ff.; Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense, 
 1855, t. iii. pp. xlvii. if. ; Carus^ Gesch. d. Zoologie, pp. 108 fi". ; and article, 
 Physiologus, by Prof. J. P. N. Land, in Encycl. Brit. 
 
 C 
 
18 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 "(Secunda natura.) Cum dormierit, oculi eius vigilant, 
 aperti enim sunt, sicut in Canticis Canticorum testatur spon- 
 SU8 dicens (5. 2) : ' Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat.' 
 Etenim corporaliter Dominus meus obdormiens in cruce et 
 sepultus, deitas eius vigilabat. 'Ecce non dormiet qui 
 custodit Israel' (Ps. 121. 4). 
 
 " (Tercia natura.) Cum leena parit catulum, generat eum 
 mortuum et custodit eum mortuum tribus diebus, donee 
 veniens pater eius die tercio insufflet in faciem ejus et vivi- 
 ficet eum. Sic omnipotens pater Dominum Nostrum Jesum 
 Christum filium suum tercia die suscitavit a mortuis, dicente 
 Jacob (4 Mos. 24. 9): 'Dormitabit tanquam leo, et sicut 
 catulus leonis. Quis suscitabit eum ? ' " 
 
 In Physiologus " The Natural History of Animals " has 
 a double character : it is not only a narrative of " facts/' but, 
 at the same time, a divinely appointed, as it were dramatic, 
 representation of doctrine for the benefit of man. 
 
 S imilarly, " Old Testament History " is regarded by Ph ilo 
 a nd his school as at once a chronicle of actual events, an d a 
 g reat allegorical representation of doctrine in which ev ents 
 ar e figures or symbols of philosophic tr uths — and that, in the 
 intention of God, not merely in the mind of the interpreter. 
 I shall have occasion to return to this strange school of 
 allegory ; meanwhile the purpose of this introductory refer- 
 ence to the subject will be sufficiently served if I quote in 
 passing, without comment, a classical passage in which one 
 of the great masters of Myth distinguishes between the literal 
 and the allegorical or mystical truth of events recorded in 
 history. 
 
 In the letter to Kan Grande,^ which is really a preface to 
 the Coriimedia, Dante writes as follows, §§ 7, 8 : — 
 
 "Ad evidentiam itaque dicendorum, sciendum est quod 
 istius operis [the Commedia] non est simplex sensus, immo 
 dici potest polysemum, hoc est plurium sensuum ; nam alius 
 sensus est qui habetur per literam, alius est qui habetur per 
 significata per literam. j^Et primus dicitur liter alis, secundus 
 vero allegoricus, sive mysticusA Qui modus tractandi, ut 
 
 1 Dean Church {Davie and other Essays, p. 103, ed. 1897) refers to this letter 
 as one "which, if in its present form of doubtful authenticity, without any 
 question represents Dante's sentiments, and the substance of which is incor- 
 porated in one of the earliest writings on the poem, Boccaccio's commentary. " 
 
INTEODUCTION 19 
 
 melius pateat, potest considerari in his versibus : * In exitu 
 Israel de Aegypto, domus Jacob de populo barbaro, facta est 
 Judaea sanctificatio eius, Israel potestas eius.' Nam uliteram 
 solam inspiciamus, significatur nobis exitus filiorum Israel de 
 Aegjpto, tempore Moysis ; si aUegoriam, nobis significatur 
 nostra redemptio facta per Christum ; si moralem sensum, 
 significatur nobis conversio animae de luctu et miseria peccati 
 ad statum gratiae ; si anagogicum, significatur exitus animae 
 sanctae ab huius corruptionis servitute ad aeternae Gloriae 
 libertatem. Et quamquam isti sensus mystici varus appel- 
 lentur nominibus, generaliter omnes dici possunt allegorici, 
 quum sint a literali sive historiali diversi. . . . His visis, 
 manifestum est quod duplex oportet esse subjectum, circa quod 
 currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum est de subjecto 
 huius operis, prout ad literam accipitur ; deinde de subjecto, 
 prout allegorice sententiatur. Est ergo subjectum totius 
 operis, literaliter tantum accepti, ' status animarum post 
 mortem simpliciter sumptus.' Nam de illo et circa ilium 
 totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus 
 allegorice, subjectum est ' homo, prout merendo et demerendo 
 per arbitrii ' libertatem Justitiae praemianti aut punienti 
 obnoxius est." ■" 
 
 In the Gonvivio (ii. 1 and 13) the four "senses" are dis 
 tinguished exactly as in the Letter. Of the moral and 
 anagogic senses he says (ii. 1, p. 252, 1. 42, Ox£ ed.) : "The 
 third sense is called moral ; it is that which readers ought 
 attentively to note, as they go through writings, for their 
 own profit and that of their disciples ; as it may be noted in 
 the Gospel, when Christ went up into the Mount to be 
 
 1 Gebhart {Vltalie Mystique, pp. 318 if.), referring to this Letter, remarks 
 that the literal interpretation of the Divina Commedia represents the traditional 
 belief of the mediaeval church, the other interpretations represent Dante's own 
 personal religion. M. Gebhart's analysis of Dante's "personal religion " is very 
 instructive : " Le dernier mot de sa croyance, cette 'religion du oceur' qu'il a 
 nommee dans le Convito, est au vingt-quatrieme chant du Paradis, et c'est k 
 Saint- Pierre lui-meme qu'il en fait la confession. II est revenu au symbole tros 
 simple de Saint -Paul, la foi, I'espdrance et I'amour ; pour lui comme pour 
 I'apotre, la foi elle-meme n'est, au fond, que I'esp^rance, fides sperandarum 
 substantia rerum. . . . Pour lui, le peche supreme, celui qu'il punit d'un 
 mepris ecrasant, ce n'est ni I'h^resie, ni I'incredulite, qu'il a raontrees, par le 
 dedain meme et la jfigure altiέre des damnes, superieures h, I'enfer ; c'est la vilta, 
 le renoncement timide au devoir actif, au dovouement, h. la vie, la lacheto du 
 pape Celestin, 
 
 Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto." 
 
2Q THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 transfigured, that of the twelve apostles he took with him the 
 three ; wherein morally we may understand, that in matters 
 of the greatest secrecy we ought to have few companions. 
 
 " The fourth sense is called anagogic, that is, above sense ; 
 and this is when a writing is expounded spiritually which, 
 even in its literal sense, by the matters signified, sets forth 
 the high things of glory everlasting : as may be seen in that 
 Song of the Prophet which says that in the coming out of the 
 people of Israel from Egypt, Judah was made holy and free. 
 Which, although it is plainly true according to the letter, is 
 
 ■ not less true as understood spiritually : that is, the Soul, in 
 coming out from sin, is made holy and free." 
 
 The rest of the chapter {Conv. ii. 1) dwells on the point, 
 which Dante evidently considers of great importance, that the 
 
 ^^literal sense must always be understood before we go on to 
 jseek out the other senses. The reversal of this order is, indeed, 
 impossible, for the other senses are contained in the literal 
 sense, which is their envelope ; and besides, the literal sense 
 is " better known to us," as the Philosopher says in the First 
 Book of the Physics ; and not to begin with it would be 
 irrational — contrary to the natural order. 
 
 3. Plato's Myths distinguished from Allegories. To 
 WHAT Experience, or " Part of the Soul," does the 
 Platonic Myth appeal ? 
 
 Plato, 'We know from the BeyuUic'^ and Phaedr us?' 
 
 de precated the allegorical interpretation of Myths, and his own 
 
 Myths, we assume, are not to be taken as allegories ; \ but 
 
 rather as representing, in the action of the Platonic Drama, 
 
 J natural products of that dream-world consciousness which 
 
 \ encompasses the field of ordinary wide-awake consciousness in 
 
 •. educated minds as well as in the minds of children and 
 
 ' primitive men. 
 
 In appealing to the dream-world consciousness of his 
 r eaders by a brilliant literary representation of its na tural 
 p roducts — those stories which primitive men cannot lea ve un- 
 
 ^ Rep. 378 D. 
 ^ Phaedrus, 229 b-e, and see infra, pp. 231 if. 
 
INTEODUCTION ^^ 21 
 
 t old, and philosophers love to hear well tolcy — Plato appeal s 
 t o an experience which is more solid than ^e might in fer 
 f rom the mere content of the μυθοΚο^'ια in which it finds expre s- 
 sion. He appeals to that major part of man's nature which is 
 not articulate and logical, but feels, and wills, and acts — to that 
 part which cannot explain what a thing is, or how it happens, 
 but feels that the thing is good or bad, and expresses itself, 
 not scientifically in " existential " or " theoretic judgments," 
 but practically in "value-judgments" — or rather" value-feelings." 
 Man was, with the brute, practical, and had struck the roots 
 of his being deep into the world of reality, ages before he 
 began to be scientific, and to think about the " values " which 
 he felt. And long before he began to think about the "values" 
 which he felt, feeling had taken into its service his imagination 
 with its whole apparatus of phantasms — waking dreams and 
 sleep-dreams — and made them its exponents. In appealing , 
 thro ugh the recital of dreams, to that major part of us which 
 fe els " values," which wills and ^cts, Plato indeed goes down 
 to the bedrock of human nature , ^^t that depth man is more 
 at one with Universal Nature- — more in her secret, as it were 
 — than he is at the level of his " higher " faculties, where he 
 lives in a conceptual world of his own making which he is 
 always endeavouring to " think." And after all, however high 
 he may rise as "thinker," it is only of "values" that he 
 genuinely thinks ; and the ground of all " values " — the Value 
 of Life itself — was apprehended before the dawn of thinking, 
 and is still apprehended independently of thinking. It is 
 good, Plato will have us believe, to appeal sometimes from the 
 world of the senses and scientific understanding, which is " too 
 much with us," to this deep-lying part of human nature, as to 
 an oracle. The responses of the oracle are not given in 
 articulate language which the scientific understanding can 
 interpret; they come as dreams, and must be received as 
 dreams, without thought of doctrinal interpretation.; Their 
 ultimate meaning is the " feeling " which fills us in beholding 
 them ; and when we wake from them, we see our daily concerns 
 and all things temporal with purged eyes. 
 
 [T'his effect which Plato produces by the Myth in the 
 Dialogue is, it is hardly necessary to say, produced, in various 
 
 1 ό φι\6μυθθ5 φίλόσοφόί ttos έστιν. — Arist. Met. Λ 2, 982 b 18. 
 
22 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 degrees, by Nature herself, without the aid of literary or other 
 
 artj The sense of " might, majesty and dominion " which 
 
 comes over us as we look into the depths of the starry sky,^ 
 
 the sense of our own short time passing, passing, with which 
 
 we see the lilacs bloom again — these, and many like them, are 
 
 I natural experiences which closely resemble the effect produced 
 
 1 in the reader's mind by Plato's art. When these natural 
 
 moods are experienced, we feel " That which was, and is, and 
 
 ever shall be " overshadowing us ; and famjKar things — the 
 
 stars, and the lilac bloom — become suddenly strange and 
 
 wonderful, for our eyes are opened to see that they declare its 
 
 presence. It is such moods of feeling in his cultivated reader 
 
 that Plato induces, satisfies, and regulates, by Myths which set 
 
 forth God, Soul, and Cosmos, in vision. 
 
 I The essential charm of these Myths is that of Poetry 
 
 I generally, whether the theme of a poem be expressly eschato- 
 
 logical and religious, like that of the Divina Commedia, or of 
 
 some other kind, for example, like that of the Fairy Queene, 
 
 or like that of a love song. The essential charm of all 
 
 /Poetry, for the sake of which in the last resort it exists, lies 
 
 ^ in its power of inducing, satisfying, and regulating what may 
 
 I l^be called Transcendental Feeling, especially that form of 
 
 ^ 1^ /Transcendental Feeling which manifests itself as solemn sense 
 
 / I of Timeless Being — of " That which was, and is, and ever shall 
 
 rbe," overshadowing us with its presence. Where this power 
 
 is absent from a piece — be it an epic, or a lyric, or a play, or 
 
 a poem of observation and reflection — there is no Poetry ; only, 
 
 at best, readable verse, — an exhibition of wit and worldly 
 
 wisdom, of interesting " anthropology," of pleasing sound, — all 
 
 either helpful or necessary, in their several places, for the 
 
 . production of the milieu in which poetic effect is felt, but 
 
 ^jione of them forming part of that effect itself. Sometimes 
 
 the power of calling up Transcendental Feeling seems to be 
 
 exercised at no point or points which can be definitely indicated 
 
 in the course of a poem ; this is notably the case where the 
 
 form of the poem is dramatic, i.e. where all turns on our 
 
 grasping " one complete action." Sometimes " a lonely word " 
 
 ^ Coleridge says {Anima Poetae, from unpublished note-books of S. T. Coleridge, 
 edited by E. H. Coleridge, 1895 ; p. 125), " Deep sky is, of all visual impressions, 
 the nearest akin to a feeling. It is more a feeling than a sight, or rather, it is 
 the melting away and entire union of feeling and sight ! " 
 
INTKODUCTION 2$ 
 
 makes the great difference. At any rate, elaborate dream-f 
 consciousness apparatus, such as we find employed in the 
 Platonic Myths, in the Divina Commedia, and in poems like 
 Endymion and Hyperion, is not essential to the full exercise 
 of the power of Poetry. Some common scene is simply 
 pictured for the mind's eye ; some place haunted by memories 
 and emotions is pictured for the heart ; a face declaring some 
 mood is framed in circumstances which match it and its mood ; 
 some fantasia of sound or colour fills eye or ear ; some sudden 
 stroke of personification amazes us ; there is perhaps nothing 
 more than the turn of a phrase or the use of a word or the 
 falling of a cadence — and straightway all is done that the 
 most elaborate and sustained employment of mythological 
 apparatus could do — we are away in the dream-world; and 
 when we presently return, we are haunted by the feeling that I 
 we have "seen the mysteries " — by that Transcendental Feeling 
 which Dante finds language to express in the twenty-fifth 
 sonnet of the Vita Nuova} and in the last canto of the 
 Paradiso : — 
 
 abbondante grazia, ond' io presunsi 
 Ficcar lo viso per la luce eterna 
 Tanto, che la veduta vi consunsi ! 
 
 Nel siio profondo vidi che s' interna, 
 
 Legato con amore in un volume, 
 
 Cio che per V universo si squaderna ; ^ 
 
 Sustanzia ed accidenti e lor costume, 
 
 Quasi conflati insieme per tal modo, 
 
 Che cio ch' io dico e un semplice lume. 
 La forma universal di questo nodo 
 
 Credo ch' io vidi, perche piu di largo^> 
 
 Dicendo questo, mi sento ch' io godo. 
 Un punto solo m' e maggior letargo, 
 
 Clie venticinque secoli alia impresa, 
 
 Che fe' Nettuno ammirar Γ ombra d' Argo.^ 
 
 Let me give some examples from the Poets of their | 
 employment of the means which I have just now mentioned. 
 
 Λ common scene is simply pictured for the mind's eye : — 
 
 Sole listener, Duddon ! to the breeze that played 
 ΛVith thy clear voice, I caught the fitful sound 
 
 1 See infra^. 38, where this sonnet is quoted. 
 
 * Paradiso, xxxiii. 82-9. 
 
24 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy mound — 
 Unfruitful solitudes, that seem'd to upbraid 
 The sun in heaven ! — but now, to form a shade 
 For thee, green alders have together wound 
 Their foliage ; ashes flung their arms around ; 
 And birch-trees risen in silver colonnade. 
 And thou hast also tempted here to rise. 
 Mid sheltering pines, this cottage rude and grey ; 
 Whose ruddy children, by the mother's eyes 
 Carelessly watched, sport through the summer day, 
 Thy pleased associates : — light as endless May 
 On infant bosoms lonely Nature lies. 
 
 Sometimes, again, the scene is fiduredfor the heart rather 
 than for the eye — we look upon a place haunted, for the Poet, 
 and after him for ourselves, by memories and emotions : — 
 
 Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row ! 
 So they row'd, and'there we landed — " venusta Sirmio ! " 
 There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow. 
 There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow, 
 Came that " Ave atque Vale " of the Poet's hopeless woe, 
 Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago, 
 " Frater Ave atque Vale " — as we wander'd to and fro 
 Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below 
 Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive -silvery Sirmio ! 
 
 Again, it is a face that we see declaring some mood, and 
 framed in circumstan^ces which match it and its mood : — 
 
 At eve a dry cicala sung. 
 
 There came a sound as of the sea ; 
 Backward the lattice-blind she flung. 
 
 And lean'd upon the balcony. 
 There all in spaces rosy-bright 
 
 Large Hesper glitter'd on her tears. 
 
 And deepening thro' the silent spheres 
 Heaven over Heaven rose the night. 
 
 Again, some fantasia of sound or light fills ear or eye, — 
 of sound, like this : — 
 
 Sometimes a-dropping from the sky 
 I heard the skylark sing ; 
 Sometimes all little birds that are. 
 How they seemed to fill the sea and air 
 With their sweet jargoning ! 
 
INTEODUCTION 25 
 
 And now 'twas like all instruments, 
 Now like a lonely flute ; 
 And now it is an angel's song, 
 That makes the heavens be mute. 
 
 Or like this :■ 
 
 The silver sounding instruments did meet 
 With the base murmur of the Water's fall : 
 The Water's fall with difference discrete. 
 Now soft, now loud, unto the Wind did call : 
 The gentle warbling Wind low answered to all. 
 
 Of sound and light together, like this : — 
 
 A sunny shaft did I behold. 
 
 From sky to earth it slanted : 
 And poised therein a bird so bold — 
 
 Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted ! 
 He sank, he rose, he twinkled, he trolled 
 
 Within that shaft of sunny mist ; 
 His eyes of fire, his beak of gold, 
 
 All else of amethyst ! 
 
 And thus he sang: " Adieu ! adieu ! 
 Love's dreams prove seldom true. 
 The blossoms, they make no delay : 
 The sparkling dewdrops will not stay. 
 Sweet month of May, 
 
 We must away ; 
 Far, far away ! 
 
 To-day! to-day!" 
 
 Again, it is some stroke of personification that fills us with 
 amazement — where we thought that Nature was most solitary, 
 see I some one is present ! 
 
 The nightingale, up-perched high. 
 And cloister'd among cool and bunched leaves — 
 She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives 
 How tiptoe Night holds back her dark-grey hood. 
 
 Or, it may be, the presence is that of Great Nature herself — 
 and she feels what we feel, and knows what we know : — 
 
 fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind ! 
 As Eve's first star thro' fleecy cloudlet peeping ; 
 And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind. 
 O'er willowy meads and shadowed waters creeping, 
 And Ceres' golden fields ; — the sultry hind 
 Meets it with bft)w uplift, and stays his reaping. 
 
L 
 
 26 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Lastly, it is perhaps hut the turn of a phrase or the fall of 
 a cadence that touches the heart : — 
 
 I heard a linnet courting 
 
 His lady in the spring ; 
 His mates were idly sporting, 
 Nor stayed to hear him sing 
 His song of love : — 
 I fear my speech distorting 
 His tender love. 
 
 So much by way of illustrating poetic effect produced, as 
 only the inspired poet knows how to produce it, by very 
 simple means. I venture to ask the student of Plato to 
 believe with me that the effect produced, in the passages just 
 quoted, by these simple means, does not differ in kind from 
 that produced by the use of elaborate apparatus in the Myths*^ 
 / with which this work is concerned. The effect is always the 
 induction of the dream-consciousness, with its atmosphere of 
 solemn feeling spreading out into the waking consciousness 
 Ljvhich follows. 
 
 It will be well, however, not to confine ourselves to the 
 examples given, but to quote some other examples from 
 Poetry, in which this effect is produced in a way more closely 
 parallel to that in which it is produced in the Platonic Myths. 
 I will therefore ask the reader to submit himself to an experi- 
 ment : first, to take the three following passages — all 
 I relating to Death — and carefully reading and re-reading them, 
 allow the effect of them to grow upon him ; and then, turning 
 to Plato's Eschatological Myths in the Fhaedo, Gorgias, and 
 Republic, and reading them in the same way, to ask himself 
 whether or no he has had a foretaste of their effect in the 
 effect produced by these other pieces. I venture to think 
 that the more we habituate ourselves to the influence of the 
 Poets the better are we likely to receive the message of the 
 Prophets. 
 
 Deh peregriniji che pensosi andate 
 Forse di cosa che non V e presente, 
 Venite voi di si lontana gente, 
 Come alia vista voi ne dimostrate ? 
 Che non piangete, quando voi passate 
 
 ^ La Vita Nuova, § 41, Sonetto 24. 
 
INTEODUCTION 27 
 
 Per lo siio mezzo la citt4 dolente, 
 
 Come quelle persone, che neente 
 
 Par che intendesser la sua gravitate. 
 Se voi restate, per volerla udire, 
 
 Certo lo core ne' sospir mi dice, 
 
 Che lagrimando n' uscirete pui. 
 EDa ha perduta la sua Beatrice ; 
 
 Ε le parole, ch' uom di lei puo dire, 
 
 Hanno virtu di far piangere altrui. 
 
 To that high Capital,^ where Kingly Death 
 Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, 
 He came : and bought, with price of purest breath, 
 A grave among the eternal. — Come away ! 
 Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day 
 Is yet his fitting charnel-roof ! Avhile still 
 He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay ; 
 Awake him not ! surely he takes his fill 
 Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. 
 
 He will awake no more — oh, never more ! 
 Within the twilight chamber spreads apace 
 The shadow of white Death, and at the door 
 Invisible Corruption waits to trace 
 His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place ; 
 The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe 
 Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 
 So fair a prey, till darkness and the law 
 Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. 
 
 Oh, weep for Adonais I — The quick Dreams, 
 The passion-winged Ministers of thought. 
 Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams 
 Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught 
 The love which was its music, wander not, — 
 Wander no more from kindling brain to brain. 
 But droop there, whence they sprung ; and mourn their lot 
 Eound the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, 
 They ne'er will gather strength, nor find a home again. 
 
 And one with trembling hand clasps his cold head. 
 
 And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries : 
 
 " Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead ; 
 
 See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 
 
 Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies 
 
 A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain." 
 
 * Shelley, Adonais. 
 
28 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise ! 
 She knew not 'twas her own ; as with no stain 
 She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. 
 
 One from a lucid urn of starry dew 
 Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them ; 
 Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw 
 The wreath upon him, like an anadem. 
 Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem ; 
 Another in her wilful grief would break 
 Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem 
 A greater loss with one which was more weak ; 
 And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. 
 
 Another Splendour on his mouth alit. 
 That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath 
 Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, 
 And pass into the panting heart beneath 
 With lightning and with music : the damp death 
 Quenched its caress upon his icy lips ; 
 And, as a dying meteor stains a Avreath 
 Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips, 
 It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. 
 
 And others came, — Desires and Adorations, 
 Winged Persuasions, and veiled Destinies, 
 Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations 
 Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies ; 
 And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 
 And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam 
 Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 
 Came in slow pomp ; — the moving pomp might seem 
 Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. 
 
 All he had loved and moulded into thought 
 From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, 
 Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 
 Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound. 
 Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, 
 Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day ; 
 Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, 
 Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay. 
 And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their dismay. 
 
 Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains. 
 And feeds her grief with his remembered lay, 
 And will no more reply to winds or fountains. 
 Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, 
 Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day ; 
 Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear 
 
INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 Than those for whose disdain she pined away 
 Into a shadow of all sounds : — a drear 
 Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. 
 
 Alas ! that all we loved of him should be, 
 But for our grief, as if it had not been, 
 And grief itself be mortal ! Woe is me ! 
 Whence are we, and why are we ? of what scene 
 The actors or spectators ? Great and mean 
 Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow. 
 As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, 
 Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow. 
 Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow. 
 
 Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — 
 He hath awakened from the dream of life — 
 'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep 
 With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
 And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 
 Invulnerable nothings — We decay 
 Like corpses in a charnel ; fear and grief 
 Convulse us and consume us day by day, 
 And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. 
 
 He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; 
 Envy and calumny, and hate and pain. 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
 Can touch him not and torture not again ; 
 From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
 He is secure, and now can never mourn 
 A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain ; 
 Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, 
 With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 
 
 He is made one with Nature : there is heard 
 His voice in all her music, from the moan 
 Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 In darkness and in light, from herb and stone. 
 Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
 Which has withdrawn his being to its own ; 
 Which wields the world with never-wearied love, 
 Sustains it from beiffeath, and kindles it above. 
 
30 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 He is a portion of the loveliness 
 AVhich once he made more lovely : he doth bear 
 His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress 
 Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there 
 All new successions to the forms they wear ; 
 Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight 
 To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 
 And bursting in its beauty and its might 
 From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. 
 
 The splendours of the firmament of time 
 May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not ; 
 Like stars to their appointed height they climb. 
 And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
 The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 
 Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair. 
 And love and life contend in it, for what 
 Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, 
 And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 
 
 The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
 Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, 
 Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 
 Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 
 Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought. 
 And as he fell, and as he lived and loved. 
 Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 
 Arose ; and Lucan, by his death approved : 
 Oblivion, as they rose, shrank like a thing reproved. 
 
 And many more, whose names on Earth are dark. 
 But whose transmitted efiluence cannot die 
 So long as fire outlives the parent spark. 
 Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
 " Thou art become as one of us," they cry ; 
 "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
 Swung blind in unascended majesty, 
 Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song. 
 Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng ! " 
 
 When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,^ 
 
 And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, 
 
 I moum'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. 
 
 Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, 
 
 Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west. 
 
 And thought of him I love. 
 
 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass {Memories of President Lincoln). 
 
INTEODUCTION 31 
 
 From this bush in the dooryard, 
 With delicate-colour'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, 
 A sprig with its flower I break. 
 
 In the swamp in secluded recesses, 
 
 A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song — 
 
 Song of the bleeding throat. 
 Death's outlet song of life. 
 
 Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities. 
 
 Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd from 
 
 the ground, spotting the grey debris, 
 Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless 
 
 Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in the 
 
 dark-brown fields uprisen. 
 Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards. 
 Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, 
 Night and day journeys a coffin. 
 
 Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, 
 Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, 
 With the pomp of the inloop'd flags, with the cities drap'd in black, 
 With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd women 
 standing. 
 
 With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the 
 bared heads. 
 
 With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang, 
 Here, coffin that slowly passes, 
 I give you my sprig of lilac. 
 
 Sing on there in the swamj), 
 
 Ο singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call, 
 
 I hear, I come presently, I understand you. 
 
 But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me. 
 
 The star, my departing comrade, holds and detains me. 
 
 how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loVd ? 
 
 And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone ? 
 
 And what shall my perfumg be for the grave of him I love ? 
 
32 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Sea-winds blown from East and West, 
 
 Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, . 
 
 on the prairies meeting . . . — 
 With these and the breath of my chant, 
 I'll perfume the grave of him I love. 
 
 ******* 
 ******* 
 Sing on, sing on, you grey-brown bird, 
 
 Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, 
 Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. 
 Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song. 
 Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe. 
 
 liquid and free and tender ! 
 
 wild and loose to my soul — wondrous singer ! 
 
 You only I hear — yet the star holds me (but will soon depart), 
 
 Yet the lilac with the mastering odour holds me. 
 
 With the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, 
 
 And the thought of death close- walking the other side of me. 
 
 And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of 
 
 companions, 
 I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, 
 Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness. 
 To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still. 
 
 And the singer so shy to the rest received me, 
 
 The grey-brown bird I know receiv'd us comrades three. 
 
 And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love. 
 
 And the charm of the carol rapt me, 
 
 As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, 
 
 And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird. 
 
 Come^ lovely and soothing death, 
 
 Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, 
 
 In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
 
 Sooner or later delicate death 
 
 Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet. 
 
 Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome ? 
 
 Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, 
 
 I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly. 
 
 From me to thee glad serenades. 
 
 Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and f eastings for thee, 
 And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting, 
 And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night — 
 
INTKODUCTION 33 
 
 The night in silence under many a star, 
 
 The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, 
 
 And the soul turning to thee, vast and well-veiVd death. 
 
 And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 
 
 Over the tree-tops I float thee a song. 
 
 Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies 
 
 wide. 
 Over the dense-packed cities all and the teeming wharves and ways, 
 I float this carol toith joy, with joy to thee, death. 
 
 The conclusion which follows, as it seems to me, from 
 examination of what one experiences in perusing great Poetry 
 — of which the three widely dissimilar pieces which I have 
 quoted at length are eminent examples — is that the essentiaT) 
 charm of Poetry — that for the sake of which, in the last» 
 resort^ it exists — lies in its ^wer of inducing, in certain care- 
 fully chosen circumstances, that mode of Transcendental '^^^ 6^%\y^ 
 Feeling which is experienced as solemn sense of the over- 
 shadmaiiHg presence of " That which was, and is, and ever shall 
 be." \The Poet, always by means of Kepresentations — images, 
 μψημοΗ-α — products of the dream-consciousness in himself, 
 and often with the aid of Ehythm and Melody which call up 
 certain shadowy Feelings, strange, in their shadowy form, to 
 ordinary consciousness, induces in his patient the dream-con- 
 sciousness in which such Eepresentations and Feelings are at 
 home.\ But the dream-consciousness induced in the patient 
 by the imagery and melody of the Poet lasts only for a 
 moment. The effect of even the most sustained Poetry is a 
 succession of occasional lapses into the state of dream-con- 
 sciousness, each one of which occurs suddenly and lasts but 
 for a moment, in the midst of an otherwise continuous 
 waking consciousness which is concerned, in a matter-of-fact 
 way, with "what the poem is about," and "how the poet 
 manages his theme," and a hundred other things. It is at 
 the moment of waking from one of these lapses into the 
 dream-world that the solemn sense of the immediate presence 
 of " That which was, and is, and ever shall be " is experienced 
 — at the moment when one sees, in the world of wide-awake 
 consciousness, the image, or hears the melody, which one saw 
 or heard only a moment ago — or, was it not ages ago ? — in 
 the dream-world : — • 
 
 D 
 
/ 
 
 34 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Un punto solo m' e maggior letargo, 
 Che venticinque secoli alia impresa, 
 Che fe' Nettuno ammirar Γ ombra d' Argo. 
 
 It is thus, as these sudden lapses, each followed immediately 
 by waking and amazement, succeed one another, it may be, at 
 long intervals, in a poem, that the power of its Poetry grows 
 upon us. It is essential to our experiencing the power of 
 Poetry that there should be intervals, and intervals of con- 
 siderable length, between the lapses. 0?he sense of having 
 seen or heard things belonging to a world in which " Time is 
 not " needs for its immediate realisation the presence, in the 
 world of waking consciousness, of things which shall " remind " 
 us of the things of that other world in which " Time is not " 
 — without such things to "remind" us, there would be no 
 " recollection " of our visit to the world in which " Time is 
 not.'^ ^he poet's image, therefore, which began by throwing 
 us into the dream-state, must persist in the state of waking 
 consciousness to which we are now returned, and there, as we 
 look at it in the light of common day, amaze us by its " resem- 
 blance " to an archetype seen in the world in which " Time 
 is not." And its persistence in the world of waking con- 
 sciousness can be guaranteed only by a more or less wide 
 context addressed to our ordinary faculties — to the senses and 
 understanding — and to our ordinary sentiments. Over this 
 matter-of-fact context, however, the amazement produced in 
 us when we perceive that the image, or other product of the 
 Poet's dream-consciousness, which just now set us, too, 
 a-dreaming, is double — is something both in the world without 
 Time, and in this temporal world — casts a glamour for a 
 while. Then the glamour fades away, and we find ourselves 
 accompanying the Poet through the every-day world ; and it 
 may be in accordance with the secret scheme which he is 
 carrying out that we are kept in this every-day world for 
 a long while, in order that we may be taken the more by 
 surprise when suddenly, as we journey, the light from heaven 
 shines round about us. "Whatever specific import," says 
 Coleridge,^ " we attach to the word poetry, there will be found 
 involved in it, as a necessary consequence, that a poem of any 
 length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry." 
 
 ^ Biog. Lit. ch. xiv. 
 
INTEODUCTION 35 
 
 The chief end of Poetry, then, is to induce Transcendental \ 
 Feeling — experienced as solemn sense of the immediate pre- 
 sence of " That which was, and is, and ever shall be " — in the 
 Poet's patient, by throwing him suddenly, for a moment, into 
 the state of dream-consciousness, out of a waking conscious- 
 ness which the Poet supplies with objects of interest; the 
 sudden lapse being effected in the patient by the communica- 
 tion to him of images and other products of the Poet's dream- 
 consciousness, through the medium of language generally, but 
 not always, distinguished from that of ordinary communication ;. 
 by rhythm and melody. *m^ 
 
 But the same result — the induction of the same form of 
 Transcendental Feeling — is produced, not only by the means 
 which the Poet employs, — dream-imagery communicated by 
 language generally, but not necessarily, rhythmic and 
 melodious, — but also by different artistic means — by the 
 means which the Painter and the Musician respectively 
 employ ; indeed — and this seems to me to be a matter of first- 
 rate importance for the Theory of Poetry — it is sometimes « 
 produced by mere Nature herself without the aid of any art, 
 and by events as they happen in one's life, and, above all, by 
 scenes and situations and persons remembered out of the days 
 of childhood and youth. " "We are always dreaming," Kenan 
 (I think) says somewhere, " of faces we knew when we were 
 eighteen." In this connection let me ask the reader to 
 consider Wordsworth's lines beginning — ^ 
 
 There was a Boy ; ye knew him weU, ye cliifs 
 And islands of Winander — 
 
 It seems to me that the mere scene described in these lines — 
 a scene to which it would not be difficult to find parallels in 
 any one's experience — is, entirely apart from the language in 
 which it is described, and simply as a picture in the mind of 
 the person who remembers it, and in the minds of those to 
 whom he describes it, the milieu in which true poetic effect 
 is experienced. As I write this, I can hardly recall a line 
 of Wordsworth's description ; but the picture which the read- 
 ing of his description has left in my mind is distinct ; and 
 it is in dwelling on the picture that I feel the poetic effect — 
 as it was, I am convinced, in dwelling on the picture, before 
 
36 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 he composed a line of the poem, that the poet himself ex- 
 perienced the feeling which he has communicated to me. 
 And the re-reading of such a poem is more likely to impair 
 than to enhance the feeling experienced by one who has once 
 
 Lfor all pictured the scene. 
 The more I read and re-read the works of the great poets, 
 and the more I study the writings of those who have some 
 Theory of Poetry to set forth, the more am I convinced that 
 the question WTiat is Poetry ? can be properly answered only 
 
 I if we make WTiat it does take precedence of ITow it does it. 
 The result produced by Poetry — identical, I hold, with that 
 produced by the other fine arts, and even sometimes by the 
 mere contemplation of Nature and Human Life — is the one 
 thing of prime importance to be kept always in view, but is 
 too often lost sight of in the examination of the means by 
 which Poetry produces it, as distinguished from those by 
 which, say. Painting produces it. Much that is now being 
 written on the Theory of Poetry leaves one with the impres- 
 sion that the writers regard the end of Poetry as something 
 sui generis — in fact, something not to be distinguished from 
 the employment of technique peculiar to Poetry among the 
 fine arts.^ I shall return to this point afterwards. 
 } In making the essential charm of Poetry — that for the 
 
 sake of which, in the last resort, it exists — lie in its power 
 of inducing, in certain carefully chosen circumstances, and so 
 of regulating, Transcendental Feeling experienced as solemn 
 sense of " That which was, and is, andj ever shall be " over- 
 shadowing us with its presence, I must Vot be taken to mean 
 that there is no Poetry where this seritee is not induced as 
 a distinct ecstatic experience. Great i^oetry, just in those 
 places where it is at its very greatest, indeed shows its 
 peculiar power not otherwise than by inducing such distinct 
 ecstatic experience ; but generally, poetic effect — not the very 
 greatest, but yet indisputably poetic effect — is produced by 
 something less — by the presence of this form of Tran- 
 
 \ scendental Feeling in a merely nascent state, — ^just a little 
 more, and it would be there distinctly ; as it is, there is a 
 
 1 Mr. Courthope {Life in Poetry, p. 78) says : "Poetry lies in the invention 
 of the right metrical form — be it epic, dramatic, lyric, or satiric — for the expres- 
 sion of some idea universally interesting to the imagination." And cf. p. 63. 
 
INTKODUCTION 37 
 
 " magic/' as we say, in the picture called up, or the natural 
 sentiment aroused, which fills us with wondering surmise — 
 of what, we know not. This "magic" may be illustrated 
 perhaps most instructively from lyric poetry, and there, from 
 the lightest variety of the kind, from the simple love song^ 
 The pictures and sentiments suggested in the love song, 
 regarded in themselves, belong to an experience which seems 
 to be, more than any other, realised fully in the present, 
 without intrusion of past or future to overcast its blue day 
 with shadow. But look at these natural pictures and senti- 
 ments not directly, but as reflected in the magic mirror of 
 Poetry ! They are still radiant in the light of their Present 
 —for let us think now only of the happy love song, not of the 
 love song which is an elegy — they are still in their happy 
 Present ; but they are not of it — they have become something 
 " rich and strange." No words can describe the change which 
 they have suffered ; it is only to be felt — as in such lines as 
 
 these : — 
 
 Das Mddchen. 
 
 Ich hab' ilin geselien ! 
 Wie ist mir geschehen ? 
 Ο himmlisclier Blick ! 
 Er kommt mir entgegen : 
 Ich weiche verlegen, 
 Ich schwanke zuriick. 
 Ich irre, ich traume ! 
 Ihr Felsen, ihr Baume, 
 Verbergt meine Freude, 
 Verberget mein Gluck ! 
 
 ^ Der Jiingling. 
 
 Hier muss ich sie finden ! 
 Ich sah sie verschwinden, 
 Ihr folgte mein BHck. 
 Sie kam mir entgegen ; 
 Dann trat sie verlegen 
 Und schamroth zuriick. 
 Ist 's Hoifnung, sind 's Traume ? 
 Ihr Felsen, ihr Baume, 
 Entdeckt mir die Liebste, 
 Entdeckt mir mein Gluck ! 
 
 The magic of such lines as these is due, I cannot doubt, 
 to the immediate presence of some great mass of feeling which 
 
38 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 they rouse, and, at the same time, hold in check, behind our 
 mere understanding of their literal meaning. The pictures and 
 sentiments conjured up, simple and familiar though they are, 
 have yet that about them which I can only compare with the 
 mysterious quality of those indifferent things which are so 
 carefully noticed, and those trifling thoughts which are so 
 seriously dwelt upon, in an hour of great trouble. 
 T^ But the Transcendental Feeling which, being pent up 
 
 behind our understanding of their literal meaning, makes the 
 magic of such lines, may burst through the iridescent film 
 which contains it. We have an example of this in the trans- 
 figuration of the Earthly into the Heavenly Beatrice. The 
 Transcendental Feeling latent behind our understanding of 
 the praise of Beatrice in the earlier sonnets and canzoni of 
 
 Lthe Vita Nuova emerges as a distinct experience when we 
 assist at her praise in the Paradiso. Contrast the eleventh 
 sonnet of the Vita Nuova with the twenty-fifth, which, with 
 its commentary, is a prelude to the Paradiso. The eleventh 
 sonnet of the Vita Nuova ends : — 
 
 Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore. 
 Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile 
 
 Nasce nel core a clii parlar la sente ; 
 
 Ond' e beato chi prima la vide. 
 Quel ch.' ella par quand' un poco sorride, 
 
 Non si puo dicer, ne tener a mente, 
 
 Si h nuovo miracolo gentile. 
 
 Here it is the magic of the lines which is all in all. Now let 
 us turn to the twenty-fifth, the last, sonnet of the Vita Nuova, 
 and to the words after it ending the book with the promise 
 of more worthy praise — more worthy, because offered with a 
 deeper sense of the encompassing presence of " That which 
 was, and is, and ever shall be " : — 
 
 Oltre la spera, che piu larga gira, 
 
 Passa il sospiro ch' esce del mio core : 
 Intelligenza nuova, che Γ Amore 
 Piangendo mette in lui, pur su lo tira. 
 
 Quand' egli h giunto Ik, doV el desira, 
 Vede una donna, che riceve onore, 
 Ε luce si, che per lo suo splendore 
 Lo peregrino spirito la mira. 
 
 Vedela tal, che, quand ο il mi ridice, 
 
INTRODUCTION 39 
 
 Ιο non Ιο intendo, si parla sottile 
 Al cor dolente, che lo far parlare. 
 So io ch' el parla di quella gentile, 
 Perocche spesso ricorda Beatrice, 
 Sicch' io lo intendo ben, donne mie care. 
 
 " Straightway after this sonnet was writ, there appeared 
 unto me a marvellous vision, wherein I beheld things which 
 made me determine not to say more concerning this Blessed 
 One until I should be able to speak of her more worthily. 
 To this end I studied with all diligence, as she knoweth well. 
 Wherefore, if it shall be the pleasure of Him through Whom 
 all things live that my life endure for some years, I hope to 
 say of her that which never before hath been said of woman. 
 And then may it please Him Who is Lord of Courtesy that 
 my Soul may go to behold the glory of her Lady, to wit, of 
 that Blessed Beatrice, who in glory doth gaze upon the face of 
 Him Who is blessed for evermore." 
 
 4. Transcendental "Feeling, the Experience to which the 
 Platonic Myth and all other Forms of Poetry 
 
 APPEAL, explained GENETICALLY. 
 
 . Transcendental Feeling I would explain genetically (as f 
 
 every mood, whatever its present value may be, — that is 
 another matter, — ought to be explained) as an effect produced 
 within consciousness (and, in the form in which Poetry is 
 chiefly concerned with Transcendental Feeling, within the 
 dream-consciousness) by the persistence in us of that primeval ι 
 condition from which we are sprung, when Life was still as I 
 sound asleep as Death, and there was no Time yet. That we \ 
 should fall for a while, now and then, from our waking, time- 
 marking life, into the timeless slumber of this primeval life is 
 easy to understand ; for the principle solely operative in that 
 primeval life is indeed the fundamental principle of our 
 nature, being that " Vegetative Part of the Soul " which 
 made from the first, and still silently makes, the assumption 
 on which our whole rational life of conduct and science rests 
 — the assumption that Life is worth living. No arguments 
 which Keason can brftig for, or against, this ultimate truth 
 
40 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 are relevant; for Eeason cannot stir without assuming the 
 
 very thing which these arguments seek to prove or to disprove. 
 
 " Live thy life " is the Categorical Imperative addressed by 
 f Nature to each one of her creatures according to its kind. 
 ^^^^ At the bottom of the scale of Life the Imperative is 
 r*^ obeyed silently, in timeless sleep, as by the trees of the 
 
 tropical forest : — 
 
 The fair and stately things. 
 
 Impassive as departed kings, 
 
 All still in the wood's stillness stood, 
 
 And dumb. The rooted multitude 
 
 Nodded and brooded, bloomed and dreamed, 
 
 Unmeaning, undivined. It seemed 
 
 No other art, no hope, they knew. 
 
 Than clutch the earth and seek the blue. 
 
 My eyes were touched with sight. 
 I saw the wood for what it was : 
 The lost and the victorious cause. 
 The deadly battle pitched in line, 
 Saw weapons cross and shine : 
 Silent defeat, silent assault, 
 A battle and a burial vault. 
 
 Green conquerors from overhead 
 Bestrode the bodies of their dead : 
 The Caesars of the sylvan field. 
 Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield : 
 For in the groins of branches, lo ! 
 The cancers of the orchid grow.^ 
 
 When to the " Vegetative " the " Sensitive " Soul is first 
 added, the Imperative is obeyed by creatures which, experi- 
 encing only isolated feelings, and retaining no traces of them 
 in memory, stiU live a timeless life, without sense of past or 
 future, and consequently without sense of selfhood. 
 
 Then, with Memory, there comes, in the higher animals, 
 some dim sense of a Self dating back and prospecting for- 
 ward. Time begins to be. But the sense of its passage brings 
 no melancholy ; for its end in death is not yet anticipated 
 by reflective thought. 
 
 Man's anticipation of death would oppress his life with 
 
 ^ Songs of Travel, R. L. Stevenson : "The Woodman." 
 
INTEODUCTION 41 
 
 insupportable melancholy, were it not that current employ- 
 ments, especially those which are spoken of as duties, are so 
 engrossing — that is, I would explain, were it not that his 
 conscious life feels down with its roots into that " Part of the 
 Soul " which, without sense of past or future or self, silently 
 holds on to Life, in the implicit faith that it is worth living 
 — that there is a Cosmos in which it is good to be. As it is, 
 there is still room enough for melancholy in his hours of ease 
 and leisure. If comfort comes to him in such hours, it is 
 not from his thinking out some solution of his melancholy, 
 but from his putting by thought, and sinking, alone, or led by 
 some μυστa'γωybς του βίου, for a while into the sleep of that 
 fundamental " Part of the Soul." When^he wakes into daily 
 life again, it is with the elementary faith of this ParFof his 
 Soul newly confirmed in his heart ; and he is ready, in the 
 strength of it, to defy all that seems to give it the lie in the 
 world of the senses and scientific understanding. Sometimes 
 the very melancholy, which overclouds him at the thought 
 of death, is transfigured, in the glow of this faith, into an 
 exultant resignation — " I shall pass, but He abideth for ever." 
 Sometimes, and more often, the faith does not merely trans- 
 figure, but dispels, the melancholy, and fills his heart with 
 sweet hope, which fancy renders into dreams of personalj 
 immortality. 
 
 To sum up in effect what I have said about Transcendental 
 Peeling : it is feeling which i ndeed appears in our ordinary 
 object -distinguishing, time -marking consciousness, but does 
 not originate in it^ ϊ^ is to be traced to the influence on 
 consciousness of the presence in us of that " Part of the 
 Soul" which holds on, in timeless sleep, to Life as worth) 
 living. Hence Transcendental Feeling is at once the solemn 
 sense of Timeless Being — of " That which was, and is, and ever 
 shall be " overshadowing us — and the conviction that Life 
 is good. In the first-mentioned phase Transcendental Feeling 
 appears as an abnormal experience of our conscious life, as 
 a well-marked ecstatic state ;•^ in its other phase — as con- 
 viction that Life is good — Transcendental Feeling may be said 
 to be a normal experience of our conscious life : it is not 
 
 1 See Paradiso, xxxiii. 82βθ6, quoted svpra, p. 23, and Vita Nuova, Sonnet 
 XXV., quoted supra, p. 38. 
 
42 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 an experience occasionally cropping up alongside of other 
 experiences, but a feeling which accompanies all the experi- 
 ences of our conscious life — that " sweet hope," ^Χυκβΐα 
 ελτΓΐ?,^ in the strength of which we take the trouble to seek 
 after the particular achievements which make up the waking 
 life of conduct and science. Such feeling, though normal, is 
 rightly called Transcendental," because it is not one of the 
 effects, but the condition, of our entering upon and persever- 
 ing in that course of endeavour which makes experience. 
 
 5. The Platonic Myth rouses and regulates Tran- 
 scendental Feeling by (1) Imaginative Kepresen- 
 TATiON OF Ideas of Eeason, and (2) Imaginative 
 Deduction of Categories of the Understanding 
 AND Moral Virtues. 
 
 I have offered these remarks about Transcendental Feeling 
 in order to preface a general statement which I now venture 
 to make about the Platonic Myths — that they are Dreams 
 expressive of Transcendental Feeling, told in such a manner 
 and such a context that the telling of them regulates, for 
 the service of conduct and science, the feeling expressed. 
 
 How then are conduct and science served by such regulation 
 of Transcendental Feeling ? 
 
 In the wide-awake life of conduct and science. Under- 
 standing, left to itself, claims to be the measure of truth ; 
 Sense, to be the criterion of good and bad. Transcendental 
 Feeling, welling up from another " Part of the Soul," whispers 
 to Understanding and Sense that they are leaving out some- 
 thing. What ? Nothing less than the secret plan of the 
 Universe. And what is that secret plan ? The other " Part 
 of the Soul " indeed comprehends it in silence as it is,^ but 
 can explain it to the Understanding only in the symbolical 
 language of the interpreter, Imagination — in Vision.* In 
 the Platonic Myth we assist at a Vision in which the 
 
 ^ y\vKe?a ol καρδίαν άτάΧλοισα Ύηροτρόφοί σνναορύ έ\ττί$, Λ μάΧίστα θνατων 
 ΊΓολύστροψον Ύνώμαν κνβερνφ. — Pindar, quoted Eep. 331 Α. 
 
 ^ As distinguished from "Empirical Feeling" ; see infra, p. 389. 
 
 ' Plotinus, Enn. iii. 8. 4, and see infra, p. 45. 
 
 * Tim. 71 D, E. The liver, the organ of Imagination, is a μαντεΐορ. 
 
INTEODUCTION 43 
 
 wide-awake life of our ordinary experiences and doings is 
 seen as an act in a vast drama of the creation and con- 
 summation of all things. The habitudes and faculties of our 
 moral and intellectual constitution, which determine a priori 
 our experiences and doings in this wide-awake life, are them- 
 selves clearly seen to be determined by causes which, in turn, 
 are clearly seen to be determined by the Plan of the Universe 
 which the Vision reveals. And more than this, — the Universe, 
 planned as the Vision shows, is the work — albeit accomplished 
 under difficulties — of a wise and good God ; for see how 
 mindful He is of the welfare of man's soul throughout all its 
 wanderings from creation to final purification, as the Vision 
 unfolds them ! We ought, then, to be of good hope, and to 
 use strenuously, in this present life, habitudes and faculties 
 which are so manifestly in accordance with a universal plan 
 so manifestly beneficent. 
 
 It is as producing this mood in us that the Platonic Myth, 
 Aetiological and Eschatological, regulates Transcendental Feel- 
 ing for the service of conduct and science. In Aetiological | 
 Myth the Categories of the Understanding and the Moral 
 Virtues are deduced from a PlmW^^^ 
 
 they are represented as parts seen, together with the whole, 
 in a former life, and " remembered " piecemeal in this ; in 
 Aetiological and Eschatological (but chiefly in Eschatological) 
 Μ rth the " Ideas of Eeason," Soul, Cosmos, as completed 
 sy tem of the Good, and God, are set forth for the justification 
 of bhat "sweet hope which guides the wayward thought of mortal 
 mj ,n " — the hope without which we should not take the trouble 
 to enter upon, and persevere in, that struggle after ever fuller 
 comprehension of conditions,-^ ever wider " correspondence with 
 environment," which the habits and faculties of our moral 
 and intellectual structure — the Categories of the Understand- 
 ing and the Moral Virtues — enable us to carry on in detail. 
 
 At this point, before I go on further to explain Plato's hand- 
 ling of Transcendental Feeling, I will make bold to explain my 
 own metaphysical position. A very few words will suffice. 
 
 I hold that it is in Transcendental Feeling, manifested 
 
 * Kant makes " Reason " (i.e. the whole man in opposition to this or that 
 part, e.g. "understanding") the source of "Transcendental Ideas," described as 
 "conceptions of the unconditioned," "conceptions of the totality of the con- 
 ditions of any thing that is given as conditioned." 
 
\ 
 
 44 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 normally as Faith in the Value of Life, and ecstatically as 
 sense of Timeless Being, and not in Thought proceeding by 
 way of speculative construction, that Consciousness comes 
 nearest to the object of Metaphysics, Ultimate Eeality. It is 
 in Transcendental Feeling, not in Thought, that Consciousness 
 comes nearest to Ultimate Eeality, because without that 
 Faith in the Value of Life, which is the normal manifestation 
 of Transcendental Feeling, Thought could not stir. It is 
 Transcendental Feeling that Consciousness is aware of 
 " The Good " — of the Universe as a place in which it is good 
 to be. Transcendental Feeling is thus the heginning of 
 Metaphysics, for Metaphysics cannot make a start without 
 assuming " The Good, or the Universe as a place in which 
 it is good to be " ; but it is also the end of Metaphysics, for 
 Speculative Thought does not really carry us further than 
 the Feeling, which inspired it from the first, has already 
 brought us : we end, as we began, with the Feeling that it 
 is good to be here. To the question, " Why is it good to be 
 here ? " the answers elaborated by Thought are no more really 
 answers than those supplied by the Mythopoeic Fancy inter- 
 preting Transcendental Feeling. When the former have 
 value (and they are sometimes not only without value, but 
 mischievous) they are, like those supplied by the Mythopoeic 
 Fancy, valuable as impressive afi&rmations of the Faith in us, 
 not at all as explanations of its ground. Conceptual solutions 
 of the " problem of the Universe " carry us no further along 
 the pathway to reality than imaginative solutions do. The 
 reason why they are thought to carry us further is that they 
 mimic those conceptual solutions of departmental problems 
 which we are accustomed to accept, and do well to accept, 
 from the positive sciences. Imaginative solutions of the 
 " problem of the Universe " are thought to be as inferior to 
 conceptual solutions as imaginative solutions of departmental 
 problems are to conceptual. The fallacy involved in this 
 analogy is that of supposing that there is a " problem of the 
 Universe" — a difficulty presented which Thought may 
 " solve." The " problem of the Universe " was first pro- 
 pounded, and straightway solved, at the moment when Life 
 began on the earth, — when a living being — as such, from the 
 very first, lacking nothing which is essential to " selfhood " or 
 
INTKODUCTION 45 
 
 " personality " — first appeared as Mode of the Universe. The 
 " problem of the Universe " is not propounded to Consciousness, 
 and Consciousness cannot solve it. Consciousness can feel 
 that it has been propounded and solved elsewhere, but cannot 
 genuinely think it. It is "propounded" to that on which 
 Consciousness supervenes (and supervenes only because the 
 problem has been already " solved ") — it is propounded to 
 what I would call "selfhood," or "personality," and is ever 
 silently being "understood" and "solved" by that principle, 
 in the continued " vegetative life " of individual and race. 
 And the most trustworthy, or least misleading, report of 
 what the " problem " is, and what its " solution " is, reaches 
 Consciousness through Feeling. Feeling stands nearer than 
 Thought does to that basal self or personality which is, 1 
 indeed, at once the living " problem of the Universe " and its 
 living " solution." The whole matter is summed up for me in 
 the words of Plotinus, with which I will conclude this statement 
 which I have ventured to make of my metaphysical position : 
 " If a man were to inquire of Nature — ' Wherefore dost 
 thou bring forth creatures ? ' and she were willing to give 
 ear and to answer, she would say — ' Ask me not, but under- 
 stand in silence, even as I am silent.' " ^ 
 
 In suggesting that the Platonic Myth awakens and 
 regulates Transcendental Feeling (1) by imaginative representa- / 
 tion of Ideas of Eeason, and (2) by imaginative deduction/ 
 of Categories of the Understanding and Moral Virtues, I doj 
 not wish to maintain that the Kantian distinction between 
 Categories of the Understanding and Ideas of Eeason was 
 explicit in Plato's mind. There is plenty of evidence in his 
 writings to show that it was not explicit ; but it is a distinction 
 of vital importance for philosophical thought, and it need not 
 surprise us to find it sometimes implicitly recognised by a thinker 
 of Plato's calibre. At any rate, it is a distinction which the 
 student of Plato's Myths will do well to have explicit in his 
 own mind. Let us remind ourselves, then, of what Kant 1 
 means by Categories of the Understanding and Ideas of \ 
 Eeason respectively. 
 
 ^ Plot. Enn. iii. 8. 4, κοΧ cf rt j hh 'αύττ^ρ (ttjv φύσιν) έροιτο rivos ^Ρ€κα irotct, 
 ei του έρωτωντοί έθέΧοι iiraaeiv καΐ \uyuv, etiroi &v' "^χρί}»' μέι/ μη έρωταν, άλλα 
 συνιέναί και αυτόν σιωπτί, uxTTrfp ^7'^ σιωτώ καΐ ούκ ^ΐθίσμαι \ayeiv" 
 
46 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Kant's Categories of the Understanding are certain a ^priori 
 Conceptions, certain Characters of the Mental Structure, 
 without which there could be no " experience " — no " know- 
 ledge " of that which alone is " known," the world of sensible 
 phenomena. These Categories, however, if they are not 
 to remain mere logical abstractions, must be regarded as 
 functions of the Understanding — as active manifestations of 
 the unifying principle of mind or consciousness. As func- 
 tions, the Categories need for their actual manifestation the 
 presence of " sensations." In the absence of sensations they 
 are " empty." They are functions of the mental organism or 
 structure which are called into operation by stimulation from 
 " environment," and that only in schemata or " figurations " 
 involving the " garment " or " vehicle " of Time.^ Thus, the 
 Category of Substance is realised in " the schema of the per- 
 sistent in time " — Something present to sense is perceived as 
 " Substance " persisting in change of " attributes " ; the 
 Category of Cause is realised in " the schema of succession in 
 time," — two sensible phenomena, one of which is antecedent 
 and the other consequent, are conceived as cause and effect — 
 the latter is conceived as following necessarily from the 
 former. " The schemata, then, are the true scientific cate- 
 gories."^ This amounts to saying that the Understanding, 
 if rightly conducted, will never make a transcendental use, 
 but only an empirical use, of any of its a priori principles. 
 These principles can apply only to objects of sense, as con- 
 forming to the universal conditions of a possible experience 
 (phenomena), and never to things as such (noumena), or apart 
 from the manner in which we are capable of perceiving them.^ 
 In contrast to the Categories of the Understanding which 
 are immanent — adequately realised in sense experience; we 
 say, for instance, that this thing present to sense is cause of 
 that other thing — the Ideas of Keason are transcendent: 
 they overleap the limits of all experience — in experience no 
 objects can be presented that are adequate to them. They 
 
 1 See Wallace's Kant, p. 172. 
 
 2 Wallace's Kant, p. 173. 
 
 ^ See Kritik d. reinen Vern? pp. 297, 298, 303. A conception is employed 
 transcendentally when it occurs in a proposition regarding things as such or in 
 themselves ; empirically, when the proposition relates merely to phenomena, or 
 objects of a possible experience. 
 
INTEODUCTION 47 
 
 are defined, generally, as "problematic conceptions of the 
 totality of conditions of anything that is given as con- 
 ditioned " ; or, since the unconditioned alone makes a totality 
 of conditions possible, as " conceptions of the unconditioned, 
 in so far as it contains a ground for the synthesis of the 
 conditioned." ^ There are three Ideas of Keason, products of 
 its activity in " carrying the fragmentary and detailed results 
 of human experience to their rational issues in a postulated 
 totality. . . . These three ideas are the Soul, as the super- 
 sensible substance from which the phenomena of Consciousness 
 are derivative manifestations ; the World [Cosmos, Universe], 
 as ultimate totality of external phenomena; and God, as 
 unity and final spring of all the diversities of existence. 
 The ideas, strictly as ideal, have a legitimate and a necessary 
 place in human thought. They express the unlimited obliga- 
 tion which thought feels laid upon itself to unify the details 
 of observation ; they indicate an anticipated and postulated 
 convergence between the various lines indicated by observation, 
 even though observation may show that the convergence will 
 never visibly be reached; or they are standards and model 
 types towards which experience may, and indeed must, if she 
 is true to the cause of truth, conceive herself boimd to approxi- 
 mate. Such is the function of ideas, as regulative ; they 
 govern and direct the action of intellect in the effort to 
 systematise and centralise knowledge. . . . But the ideas 
 naturally sink into another place in human knowledge. 
 Instead of stimulating research, they become, as Kant once 
 puts it, a cushion for the lazy intellect. Instead of being the 
 ever-unattainable goals of investigation, they play a part in 
 founding the edifice of science. Ceasing to be regulative of 
 research, they come to be constitutive of a pretended know- 
 ledge." 2 
 
 The Ideas of Keason, then, are aims, aspirations, ideals ; ι 
 but they have no adequate objects in a possible experi- 
 ence. The three " Sciences " which venture to define objects 
 for them — Eational Psychology, Kational Cosmology, and 
 Theology — are, according to Kant, sham sciences. The Idea 
 of Soul, the absolute or unconditioned unity of the thinking 
 
 1 Zriii;5;,2pp.J79, 384 (Prof. Watson's Transl. ). 
 2 Wafface's Kant, pp. 182, 183. 
 
48 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 subject, has no object in possible experience answering 
 to it. "We are making an illegitimate transcendental use 
 of a Category when we conceive the subject of all knowledge 
 as an object under the Category of Substance. Similarly, the 
 ultimate totality of external phenomena — the Cosmos as 
 absolute whole — is not an object of possible experience ; it is 
 not something given in sense, to be brought under Categories 
 or scientific conceptions. Finally, the Idea of God is perverted 
 from its regulative use, when it is made the foundation of a 
 science — Dogmatic Theology — wlfich applies the Categories 
 of Substance, Cause, and the rest, to a Supreme Being, as if 
 He were an object presented in sense experience. 
 
 To sum up : — The Categories of the Understanding are so 
 many conditions of thought which Human Understanding, 
 constituted as it is, expects to find, and does find, fully 
 satisfied in the details of sensible experience. The Ideas 
 of Reason indicate the presence of a condition of thought 
 which is not satisfied in any particular item of experi- 
 ence. They are aspirations or ideals expressing that nisus 
 after fuller and fuller comprehension of conditions, wider and 
 wider correspondence with environment — in short, that nisus 
 after Life, and faith in it as good, without which man would 
 not will to pursue the experience rendered possible in detail 
 by the Categories. But although there can be no speculative 
 science of objects answering to the Ideas of Eeason, we 
 should come to naught if we did not act as if there were such 
 objects ; and any representation of objects answering to these 
 Ideas which does not invite exposure by pretending to scientific 
 rank is valuable as helping us to " act as if" The objects of 
 these Ideas are objects, not for science, but for faith. When 
 the scientific understanding " proves " that God exists, or that 
 the Soul is immortal, refutation lies near at hand ; but the 
 " as if " of the moral agent rests on a sure foundation.•^ 
 
 ^ "We have three postulates of practical reason which are closely related to 
 the three Ideas of theoretical reason. These Ideas reason in its theoretical use 
 set before itself as problems to be solved ; but it was unable to supply the solution. 
 Thus, the attempt to prove theoretically the permanence of the thinking subject 
 led only to paralogism ; for it involved a confusion of the subject presupposed in 
 all knowledge of objects, and only in that point of view permanent, with an 
 object known under the Category of Substance. But now we find that a faith of 
 reason in the endless existence of the self-conscious subject is bound up with the 
 possibility of his fulfilling the moral law. Again, the attempt speculatively to 
 determine the world as a system complete in itself landed us in an antinomy 
 
INTKODUCTION 49 
 
 To return now from Kant to Plato : — Plato's Myths induce 
 and regulate Transcendental Feeling for the service of conducti -s/ 
 and knowledge by setting forth the a yriori conditions of con-i 
 duct and knowledge — that is, (1) by representing certain ideals 
 or presuppositions, in concrete form — the presuppositions of 
 an immortal Soiil, of an intelligible Cosmos, and of a wise and 
 good God — all three being natural expressions of the sweet 
 hope in the faith of which man lives and struggles on and on ; 
 and (2) byjracing to their origin in the wisdom and goodness of 
 God, and the constitution of the Cosmos, certain habitudes or 
 faculties (categories and virtues), belonging to the make of 
 man's intellectual and moral nature, which prescribe the various 
 modes in which he must order in detail the life which his 
 faith or sweet hope impels him to maintain. Myth , not 
 argumentative conversation, is rightly chosen by Plato as the, 
 yehicle_o£.^j!cposition when he deals with a priori conditions 
 of conduct and knowledge, whether they be ideals or faculties. 
 When a man asks himself, as he must, for the reason of the 
 hope in which he struggles on in the ways prescribed by his 
 faculties, he is fain to answer — " Because I am an immortal 
 Soul, created with these faculties by a wise and good God, 
 under whose government I live in a Universe which is His 
 finished work." This answer, according to Plato, as I read 
 him, is the natural and legitimate expression of the " sweet hope . 
 which guides the wayward thought of mortal man " ; and the I 
 expression reacts on — gives strength and steadiness to — that ' 
 which it expresses. It is a " true answer " in the sense that 
 man's life would come to naught if he did not act and think 
 as if it were true. But Soul, Cosmos as completed system of 
 the Good, and God are not particular objects presented, along 
 
 which we were able to escape only by the distinction of the phenomenal from 
 the intelligible world — a distinction which theoretic reason suggested, but which 
 it could not verify. But now, the moral law forces us to think ourselves as free, 
 and therefore as belonging to an intelligible world which we are further obliged 
 to treat as the reality of which the phenomenal world is the appearance. Lastly, 
 the Absolute Being was to theoretic reason a mere ideal which knowledge could 
 not realise ; but now His existence is certified to us as the necessary condition of 
 the possibility of the object of a Will determined by the moral law. Thus, through 
 practical reason we gain a conviction of the reality of objects corresponding to the 
 three Ideas of Pure Reason. We do not, indeed, acquire what is properly to be 
 called knowledge of these objects. We only change the problematic conception 
 of them into an assertion of their real existence ; but, as we are not able to 
 bring any perception under such Ideas, so we are unable to make any synthetic 
 judgment regarding the objects the existence of which we assert." — Caird's 
 Critical Philosophy of Kant, iif 297. 
 
 Ε 
 
50 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 with other particular objects, in sensible experience. This 
 
 the Scientific Understanding fails to grasp. When it tries to 
 
 deal with them — and it is ready enough to make the venture 
 
 ^ — it must needs envisage them, more suo, as though they were 
 
 particular objects which could be brought under its Categories in 
 
 sensible experience. Then the question arises, "Where are 
 
 they ? " And the answer comes sooner or later, " They are 
 
 I nowhere to be found." Thus " science " chills the " sweet hope " 
 
 \ in which man lives, by bringing the natural expression of it 
 
 vinto discredit. 
 
 This, I take it, is Plato's reason for employing Myth, 
 rather than the language and method of " science," when he 
 wishes to set forth the a ^m^L ^s it expresses itself in Ideals. 
 In the mise en scdne of the Timaeus or Myth of Er, Soul, 
 Cosmos, and God are presented concretely indeed, but in such 
 visionary form that there is little danger of mistaking them 
 for particulars of sense requiring " scientific explanation." 
 Again, as for the a priori Habitudes or Faculties of man's 
 moral and intellectual structure, whereby he corresponds with 
 his environment in detail — these, too, Plato holds, are to be 
 set forth in Myth ; for they are properly set forth when they 
 are " deduced " — traced to their origin, which is that of the 
 Cosmos — a matter beyond the reach of the Scientific Under- 
 standing. It is in a Myth of Reminiscence, therefore, such 
 as that in the Fhaedrus, that we must take account of the 
 question of " the origin of knowledge " ; in a Myth such as 
 that of the Golden Age in the Laws, of the question of " the 
 origin of society."•^ 
 
 These and other ultimate "questions of origin," carrying 
 us back as they do to the nature of God and the constitution 
 of the Cosmos, are not for "science." Plato found Myth 
 invested in the minds of his contemporaries with the authority 
 of old tradition and the new charm which Pindar and the 
 tragedians had bestowed upon it ; perhaps, too, if my sugges- 
 tion 2 has any value, he found it associated, in his own mind 
 and the minds of other Socratici viri, with the personal 
 influence of the Master where that influence was most im- 
 
 ^ The spirit, and much in the detail, of the Cratylus justify the view that 
 Plato approached the question of the "origin of language" too δια μvθo\oyίas. 
 ^ Supra, p. 3. 
 
INTRODUCTION 51 
 
 pressive and mysterious — he found Myth thus ready to his 
 hand, and he took it up, and used it in an original way for a 
 philosophical purj)ose, and transformed it as the Genius of 
 Sculpture transformed the ξόανα of Daedalus. 
 
 Further remarks on the a priori in conduct and knowledge 
 as set forth by means of the mythological deduction of 
 Faculties will be best deferred till we come to the Fhaedrus 
 Myth ; but some general observations on the a priori as set 
 forth by means of the mythological representation of Ideals — 
 " forms of hope," ^ " objects of faith " — may be helpful at this 
 introductory stage. Let us then consider broadly, first, Plato's 
 handling of the " Idea of God," and then his handling of the 
 " Idea.. oL-Soul." Consideration of his handling of the " Idea 
 of Cosmos" may well be deferred till we come to the 
 2\7riaeus. 
 
 6. Plato's Treatment of the Idea of God 
 
 To the religious consciousness, whether showing itself in 
 the faith which " non-religious people " sometimes find privately 
 and cling to in time of trouble, or expressed to the world in 
 the creeds and mythologies of the various religions, the Idea 
 of God is the idea of a Personal God, or, it may be, of personal 
 Gods. The God of the religious consciousness, whatever else 
 he may be, is first of all a separate individual — one among 
 other individuals, human and, it may be, superhuman, to 
 whom he stands in relations by which he is determined or 
 limited. He is Maker, King, Judge, Father, Friend. It may 
 be true that attributes logically inconsistent with his being a 
 finite individual person are ascribed to him in some of the 
 creeds ; but the inconsistency, when perceived, is always so 
 dealt with that the all - important idea of his personality 
 is left with undiminished power. The idea of the separate 
 individuality or personality of the Self is not more essential 
 to the moral consciousness than the idea of the separate 
 individuality or personality of God is to the religious conscious- 
 ness ; and in the religious consciousness, at any rate, both of 
 
 1 It never yet did hurt. 
 To lay down Mkelihoods and forms of hope, 
 
 Henry IV. (Part ii.), i. 3. 
 
52 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 these ideas are involved — an individual Self stands in a 
 personal relation to another individual, God.^ 
 
 But logical thinking — whether in natural science or in 
 metaphysics — when it busies itself, as it is too fond of doing, 
 with the " Idea of God," arrives at a conclusion — this cannot 
 be too plainly stated — flatly opposed to the conviction of the 
 religious consciousness. Aristotle's ivepyeta dvev Βυνάμ€ω<; 
 is not a Person ; nor is Spinoza's Substantia Infinita ; nor 
 is the Absolute of later systems, although its true logical 
 character has sometimes been disguised ; nor is the " Nature " 
 of modern science. Logical or scientific thinking presupposes 
 and makes explicit the idea of an orderly Universe, of an 
 organic whole determining necessarily the behaviour of its 
 parts, of a single system realising itself fully, at every 
 moment and at every place, in events which, for the most 
 part, recur, and recurring retain a uniform character, or only 
 change their character gradually. We should not be here, 
 science assures us — living beings, acting and thinking — if the 
 changes in our environment were catastrophic, not orderly and 
 gradual. But although the Universe must be orderly if we 
 are to live, it does not follow that it is orderly that we may 
 live. Logical or scientific thinking, as such, scouts teleology 
 in that form in which it is cherished by the religious conscious- 
 ness, belief in a Particular Providence, — logical or scientific 
 thinking, as such, that is, when it is not deflected from its path, 
 as it sometimes is, by the attraction of religious conviction, 
 just as the religious consciousness, on the other hand, is 
 sometimes disturbed by science. Teleology, when taken up 
 seriously, not merely played with, is a method which assumes 
 the intentions of a Personal Euler of the Universe, and explains 
 the means which he employs in order to carry out his 
 intentions.^ Logical or scientific thinking, as such, finds it 
 
 ^ Cf. Hegelianism arui Personality, A. S. Pringle-Pattison, pp. 217-218. 
 
 2 In saying that "science" scouts the teleology which recommends itself to the 
 "religious consciousness" I do not think that I contradict the view, so ably 
 enforced by Prof. W. James, that " teleology is the essence of intelligence " — that 
 the translation, in which "science" consists, of the perceptual into the con- 
 ceptual order "always takes place for the sake of some subjective interest, . . . 
 and. the conception with which we handle a bit of sensible experience is really 
 nothing but a teleological instrument. This whole function of coiiceiving, of 
 fixing, and holding-fast to meanings, has no significance apart from the fact that 
 the conceiver is a creature with partial purposes and private ends." — Princ. of 
 Ρη /ch. i. 482. 
 
INTKODUCTION 53 
 
 inconceivable that the Part — and a Personal God, an individual 
 distinguished from other individuals, is a Part — should thus 
 rule the Whole. If science and the religious consciousness 
 try, as they sometimes do, to come to an understanding with 
 each other on the basis of such a phrase as " Infinite Person " 
 or " Universal Consciousness," the result is only to bring out 
 more clearly, in the self-contradictory phrase, the incompati- 
 bility of their two points of view, and to make the breach, 
 which it is attempted thus to heal, still wider. It is wise to 
 recognise, once for all, that the scientific understanding, work-, 
 ing within its own region, finds no place for a Personal God,( 
 and that the religious consciousness demands a Personal God' 
 — a Part^which rules the Whole. The scientific conception 
 of Whole ruling Parts is, indeed, so distasteful to the religious 
 consciousness that it always leans to Polytheism rather than 
 to Monotheism. 
 
 That the incompatibility of the scientific conception withy 
 the conviction of the religious consciousness was present to 
 Plato's mind is proved, as it seems to me, by the circumstance| 
 that it is in Myth that he presents the idea of a Personal-' 
 God and the correlate idea of a Personal Immortality of the' 
 Soul. 
 
 Lest it should be objected that it is " unhistorical " to 
 ascribe to Plato any perception of the issue on which religion 
 and " modern science " are at variance, it may be well to point 
 out that Plato's pupil, Aristotle, was aware of the issue, and 
 faced it with characteristic directness. Any one who reads the 
 Metaphysics, Be Anima, and Ethics in connection will be struck 
 by the way in which the logician gives up, apparently without 
 scruple, the idea of a Personal God, and the correlate idea of 
 the Personal Immortality of the Soul. 
 
 It may help us to make out what Plato hopes for from 
 presenting these correlate ideas, in Myth, to the adult readers 
 of his Dialogues, if we recall what he lays down in the second 
 book of the BepuUic about the religious instruction of young 
 children, on which all mental and moral education, according 
 to him, is to be founded. 
 
 The education of children, he tells us, is not to begin with 
 instruction in " facts " or " truths." It is not to begin, as we 
 might say, with the " elementary truths of science " and " facts 
 
54 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 r^ca; 
 
 common life," as learned in the primer. Young children 
 cannot yet understand what is true in fact. We must begin, 
 then, with what is false in fact — with fictions, with stories. 
 Their only faculty is that of being interested in stories. 
 Hence it is all important to have good stories to tell them — 
 to invent Myths with a good tendency. They are to be 
 told what is literally false, in order that they may get hold of 
 what is spiritually true — the great fundamental truth that God 
 is " beneficent " and " truthful " — both adjectives applicable to 
 a person ; and a finite person, for they are to believe that he is 
 the author only of what is good. 
 
 That God is such a finite person, then, is true, Plato would 
 tell us ; not, indeed, true in the sense in which the description 
 of phenomena or data of experience may be true, but true, as 
 being the only or best possible expression, at least for children, 
 of the maxim or principle of guidance without which human 
 life must come to naught. If children believe that God is the 
 author, not of good only, but of evil also, they will grow up to 
 be discontented and without hope — without faith in the good 
 providence which helps those who help themselves — ready 
 always to blame God or bad luck, rather than themselves, for 
 their troubles and failures. If they do not believe that he is 
 truthful, they will grow up to be careless observers and abstract 
 reasoners, neglecting, as insignificant and " due to accident," 
 those so-called little things which the careful interpreter of 
 nature recognises as important signs and symptoms. They 
 will grow up without the principles on which Conduct and 
 Science respectively depend. On the one hand, they will be 
 without that " hope which guides the wayward thoughts of 
 men" — the faith (which indeed all struggle for existence 
 implies) that honest effort will, on the whole, succeed in attain- 
 ing good; they will believe instead — so far as it is possible 
 for a living being to believe this — that "life is not worth 
 living " ; and so far as they are not, and cannot be, consistent 
 pessimists, they will be selfish, individualistic citizens. On 
 the other hand, if they have not been taught in their 
 childhood to believe that " God is truthful," they will grow 
 up without the first postulate of science — faith in the order 
 and interpretability of the world. In one sentence, — "The 
 Lie in the Soul" — the spirit of pessimism in conduct and 
 
INTEODUCTION 55 
 
 scepticism in science — will bring to naught all those who have 
 not believed, in their childhood, that God is a Person, good 
 and true. In their childhood : May they, will they, give up 
 afterwards the belief in his Personality when it has done its 
 work? 
 
 Most of them, continuing to live in " sense and imagina- 
 tion," — albeit, under good guidance, useful lives, — will have no 
 difficulty in retaining the belief of their childhood ; but a few 
 will become so "logical" that they will hardly be able to 
 retain it. 
 
 It is in relation to the needs of these latter that we ought 
 to consider the Myths setting forth the idea of a Personal God 
 and the correlate idea of Personal Immortality of the Soul, 
 which Plato has put into his Dialogues. In these Myths 
 they have representations of what they once believed as 
 fact without questioning. They see the world of childhood/ 
 — that dream-world which was once so real — put on the stage! 
 for them by a great Maker of Mysteries and Miracles. 
 
 But why represent it ? That the continuity of their lives 
 may be brought home to them — that they may be led to 
 sympathise with what they were, and, sympathising, to realise 
 that what they now are — is due to what they were. It is 
 because the continuity of life is lost sight of, that religious 
 conviction and scientific thought are brought into opposition. 
 The scientific thinker, looking back over his life, is apt to 
 divide it sharply into the time during which he believed what 
 is not true, and the time during which he has known the 
 truth. 
 
 Thus to fail in sympathy with his own childhood, and 
 
 with the happy condition of the majority of men and women, 
 
 and with the feelings which may yet return to comfort him 
 
 fwhen the hour of his death draws near, betokens, Plato would 
 
 isay, a serious flaw in a man's " philosophy of life." The man 
 
 /abstracts " the p resent time'' from its setting in his whole life. 
 
 I He plucks from its stem the " knowledge of truth," and thinks 
 
 lahat it still lives. The "knowledge of truth," Plato would tell 
 
 us, does not come except to the man whose character has been 
 
 formed and understanding guided, in childhood and youth, by 
 
 unquestioning faith in the goodness and truthfulness of a 
 
 Personal God. And this faith he must reverence all his life 
 
56 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 through, looking back to his childhood and forward to his 
 death. To speak of this faith as false, and a thing of the 
 past, is what no Thinker will care to do. The Thinker— "the 
 spectator of all time and all existence "^^does not cut up the 
 organic unity of his life into the abstractions of Past, and 
 Present, and Future — Past which is non-existent. Present 
 which is > mere imaginary point. Future which is non- 
 existent. /His life is all one Present, concrete, continuous, 
 indivisible.^ 
 
 The man who cuts up life into Past, Present, and Future, 
 does so with the intent of appropriating something for his own 
 private use. The Thinker, who sees Life clearly and sees it 
 whole, will regard religious belief and scientific knowledge as 
 both means for the sake of conduct, or corporate action. 
 He will show his devotion to this end by setting his face 
 steadily against individualism in the pursuit of knowledge and 
 the holding of belief — against the scientific specialist's ideal 
 of the indefinite accumulation of knowledge — against the 
 priest's doctrine of the opus operatum, effectual in securing the 
 only true good, as it is thought, the private profit of the 
 individual — hardest of all, against the refined form of indi- 
 vidualism by which he is himself tempted, the individualism 
 of the schoolman, or doctrinaire, who withdraws himself within 
 his logical faculty, and pleases himself there with the con- 
 struction of " a System " — ρήματα ε^εττιττ/δβ? άΧλήΧοίς 
 ώμοίωμβνα. 
 
 In the Allegory^ of the Cave, Plato sho'^g^us the victory of 
 the Thinker over individualism. The Thinker has come out at 
 last into the daylight, and, when he might s'iay in it always 
 and enjoy it, he will not stay, but returns into the Cave to 
 pay his τροφβΐα — the debt which he owes for the education 
 which he has received — by carrying on, in the 'training of a 
 new generation, the regime to which he owes it that he has 
 seen the light. " We shall compel him to return," Plato says, 
 and he adds, " We do him no injustice." The compulsion is 
 moral, not external.^ It is the obligation which the perfectly 
 
 ^ He realises in an eminent degree what seems to be the experience of us all ; 
 for "our 'present* is always an extended time," not an indivisible point: see 
 Bosanquet's Logic, i. 351. 
 
 '^ — and Myth ; see ivfra, p. 252. 
 
 3 Eep. 520. 
 
INTEODUCTION 57 
 
 educated man feels laid upon him by. his consciousness of his 
 inherence in the continuous life of his city — the obligation 
 of seeing to it that his own generation shall have worthy 
 successors. ,, 
 
 How important, then, to keep alive in the elders sympathy 
 with the faith in which it is necessary they should bring up the 
 young generation ! Consciousness of what they owe as τροφβΐα, 
 and earnest desire to pass the State on to worthy successors, 
 will do most to keep alive this sympathy ; but, on the other 
 hand, the logical understanding will always be reminding them 
 that "in truth" (though perhaps not "in practice") the doctrines 
 of science and the convictions of the religious consciousness are 
 " incompatible " ; and it is here, I take it, with regard to this 
 άτΓορία started by abstract thought, that Plato hopes for good 
 from Myth, as from some great Eitual at which thinkers may 
 assist and feel that there are mysteries which the scientific 
 understanding cannot fathom. 
 
 That the scientific understanding, then, working within 
 its own region, must reject the idea of a Personal God, was, I 
 take it, as clear to Plato as it was to Aristotle. 
 
 Would Plato, then, say that the proposition " There is a 
 Personal God " is not true ? He would say that what children 
 are to be taught to believe — " that once upon a time God or 
 the Gods did this thing or that" — is not true as historical 
 fact. Where historical or scientific fact is concerned, the 
 scientific understanding is within its own region, and is com- 
 petent to say "it is true" or "it is not true" But the 
 scientific understanding cannot be allowed to criticise its own 
 foundation — that which all the faculties of the living man, the 
 scientific understanding itself included, take for granted — " that 
 it is good to go on living the human life into which I have 
 been born ; and that it is worth while employing my faculties 
 carefully in the conduct of my life, for they do not deceive me." 
 This fundamental assumption of Life, " It is good to live, and 
 my faculties are trustworthy," Plato throws into the proposi- 
 tion, " There is a Personal God, good and true, who keeps me 
 in all my ways." He wishes children to take this proposition 
 literally. He knows that abstract thinkers will say that " it 
 is not true " ; but he is satisfied if the men, whose parts and 
 training have made theii influential in their generation, read 
 
58 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 it to mean — things happen as if they were ordered by a 
 Personal God, good and true. To this as if — this recognition 
 of "Personal God" as "Eegulative Principle" — they are 
 helped — so I take Plato to think — by two agencies, of which 
 Myth, breaking in upon the logic of the Dialogue with the 
 representation of the religious experience of childhood, and of 
 venerable old age like that of Cephalus, is one. The other 
 agency is Kitual.^ This is recognised by Plato as very im- 
 portant ; and Myth may be taken to be its literary counterpart. 
 One of the most significant things in the Republic is the de- 
 ference paid to Delphi. Philosophy — that is, the Constitution 
 of the Platonic State — indeed lays down " canons of orthodoxy," 
 the TVTTOL Trepl deoXoyia^ ^ — determines the religious dogma ; 
 but the ritual is to be determined from without, by Delphi.* 
 Keligion is to be at once rational and traditional — at once 
 reformed, and conservative of catholic use. Plato was not in 
 a position to realise the difficulty involved in this arrangement.• 
 It is a modern discovery, that ritual reacts on dogma, and in 
 some cases even creates it. Plato seems to take for granted 
 that the pure religious dogma of his State will not in time be 
 affected by the priestly ritual. At any rate, he assumes that 
 his State, as the civil head of a united Hellas,^ and Delphi, as 
 the ecclesiastical head, will, like Empire and Church in Dante's 
 De Monarchia, be in sympathy with each other. 
 
 It is plain, then, from the place — if I have rightly indicated 
 the place — which Plato assigns to Eitual in daily life, and to 
 
 * "A rite is an assemblage of symbols, grouped round a religious idea or a 
 religious act, intended to enhance its solemn character or develop its meaning — 
 just as a myth is the grouping of mythic elements associated under a dramatic 
 form. . . . Thus we have the rite of baptism, funeral rites, sacrificial rites." 
 R^ville, ProUgom^ies de VHistaire des Religions (Eng. Transl. by Squire), p. 110. 
 
 2 7?<?2>• 379 a. 
 
 ^ Rep. 427 B, Ύί o^v, ^φη, in hv ήμΖν Xonrhv τη^ νομοθ€σία$ €Ϊη ; καΐ έ-γώ elirov 
 δτι Ήμΐν μέν ουδέν, τφ μέντοι Άττόλλωνι τφ ev Αελφοΐ^ τά re μέ'/ίστα και 
 κάλλιστα καΐ πρώτα των νομοθετημάτων. Τά ποια ; f} δ' 6s. Ιερών τβ Ιδρύσεις 
 καΐ θνσίαι καΐ άλλαι Θεών τε και δαφόνωμ και ηρώων θεραττεΐαι, τελεντησάντων 
 τε αΰ θηκαι καΐ 6σα tois έκεΐ δει υπηρετούνται ϊλεωί ai)roi>s έχειν. τα yap δη 
 τοιαύτα οϋτ έπιστάμεθα ημεΐ$ οικίξοντέ$ τε πόλιν ούδενΐ άλ\φ πεισόμεθα, εάν 
 νουν ίχωμεν, ουδέ χρησόμεθα εξηγητή, αλλ' ^ τφ πατρίφ• oDtos yap δηπου ό 
 θεο$ περί τά τοιαύτα πάσιν άνθρωποι^ πάτριοι έξηyητ'r]ί εν μέσφ τηί yrjs έπΙ του 
 ομφαλού καθήμενοι έξηyεΐτaι. 
 
 "* See infra, pp. 454-5, where it is argued that;Plato's καλλίπολίί is misunder- 
 stood (as in part by Aristotle) if its constitution is taken to be drawn for an 
 isolated municipality, and not for an Empire-city (like the antediluvian Athens 
 of the Atlantis Myth), under which, as civil head (Delphi being the ecclesiastical 
 head), Hellas should be united against barbarians for the propagation of liberty 
 and culture in the world. 
 
INTRODUCTION 59 
 
 Myth in philosophical literature/ what place he assigns to ' 
 the scientific understanding. 
 
 The scientific understanding, which is only a small part, 
 and a late developed part, of the whole man, as related to his 
 whole environment, is apt, chiefly because it has the gift of 
 speech and can explain itself, while our deeper laid faculties 
 are dumb, to flatter itself with the conceit that it is the 
 measure of all things — that what is to it inconceivable is 
 impossible. It cannot conceive the Part ruling the Whole : 
 therefore it says that the proposition " the World is ruled by 
 a Personal God " is not true. 
 
 Plato has, so far as I can gather, two answers to this 
 pronouncement of the scientific understanding. The first is, 
 " Life would come to naught if we acted as if the scientific 
 understanding were right in denying the existence of a 
 Personal God " ; and he trusts to Ritual and Myth (among 
 other agencies) to help men to feel this. His attitude here is 
 very like Spinoza's : — 
 
 Deum nullam aliam sui cognitionem ab hominibus per prophetas 
 petere, quam cognitionem divinae suae justitiae et caritatis, hoc 
 est, talia Dei attributa, quae homines certa vivendi ratione imitari 
 possunt; quod quidem Jeremias expressissimis verbis docet (22. 
 15, 16). . . . Evangelica doctrina nihil praeter simplicem fidem 
 continet ; nempe Deo credere eumque revereri, sive, quod idem est, 
 Deo obedire. . . . Sequitur denique fidem non tarn requirere vera, 
 quam pia dogmata, hoc est, talia, quae animum ad obedientiam 
 movent. . . . Fidem non tarn veritatem, quam pietatem exigere.''^ 
 
 Plato's other answer goes deeper. It consists in showing 
 that the "Whole," or all-embracing Good, cannot be grasped I 
 scientifically, but must be seen imperfectly in a similitude.^! 
 The logical understanding, as represented by Glaucon, not 
 satisfied with knowing what the all-embracing Good is like, 
 wishes to know what it is — as if it were an object presented 
 to knowledge. But the Good is not an object presented to. 
 knowledge. It is the condition of knowledge. It is likel 
 
 1 Or rather, in philosopliical conversation ; for the Platonic Dialogues, after 
 all, with their written discussions and myths, are only offered as models to be 
 followed in actual conversation — actual conversation being essential to the 
 continued life of Philosophy. 
 
 '•^ Spinoza, Tractatus Tlieokgico-politiciiS, chapters 13 and 14. 
 
 3 Bep. 506. 
 
 
60 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Light which is not one of the things seen, but the condition 
 of seeing. To suppose that the Whole, or Good, is an object, 
 among objects, of knowledge, is the fault which Plato, as I 
 read him, finds with the logical understanding ; and a Platonist 
 might, I think, be allowed to develop the Master's criticism as 
 follows : — The conception of " Whole " or " Universe " which 
 the logical understanding professes to have, and manipulates 
 in its proof of the non-existence of a Personal God, is not a 
 " conception " at all. The understanding cannot conceive the 
 Universe as finished Whole. Its " whole " is always also a 
 " part " of something indefinitely greater. The argument that 
 " the Euler of the Universe is not a Personal God, because the 
 Part cannot rule the Whole," juggling, as it does, with this 
 sham conception — that of " Whole which is not also Part " — 
 is inconclusive. 
 
 7. Plato's Treatment of the Idea of Soul 
 
 Let us now turn to the " Idea of Soul." The Soul is 
 represented in the three strictly Eschatological Myths of the 
 Fhaedo, Gorgias, and BepuUic, and in other Myths not strictly 
 Eschatological, as a Person created by God, and responsible to 
 him for acts in which it is a free agent within limits set by 
 ανάγκη — responsible to God throughout an existence which 
 began before its incarnation in this body, and will continue 
 for ever after the death of this body — an existence in which 
 it is subject to periodical re-incarnations, alternating with 
 terms of disembodiment, during which it receives recompense 
 for the deeds done in the flesh ; till at last — if it is not 
 incorrigible — it is thoroughly purified by penance, and enters 
 into the peace of a never-ending disembodied state, like that 
 which it enjoyed in its own peculiar star, before it began the 
 cycle of incarnations. 
 
 Zeller,^ while admitting that many details in Plato's 
 doctrine of the pre-existence and future destiny of the 
 immortal Soul are mythic, maintains that the doctrine itself, 
 in its broad outlines, is held by him dogmatically, and 
 propounded as scientific truth. Pre-existence, recollection, 
 
 1 Zeller, Plato, Eng. TraDsl. pp. 397-413. Thiemann {Die PlcUonische 
 Eschatologu in ihrer geneiischen Entvnckelung, 1892, p. 27) agrees with Zeller. 
 
INTEODUCTION 61 
 
 retribution, re-incaruation, final purification, and never-ending 
 disembodied existence of the purified soul — these, Zeller thinks, 
 are set forth by Plato as facts which are literally true. Hegel,^ \ 
 on the other hand, holds that the Platonic doctrine of the | 
 Soul is wholly mythic. I take it from a passage in the 
 Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason ^ that Kant would 
 think with Zeller against Hegel. Where such authorities 
 differ one might well remain neutral; but I cannot help 
 saying that I incline to the view that the bare doctrine of 
 immortality (not to mention the details of its setting) is 
 conceived by Plato in Myth, and not dogmatically — or perhaps 7 
 I ought to say, conceived eminently in Myth ; for the dogmatic' 
 way of conceiving immortality is not formally excluded on 
 Platonic, as it is on Kantian, principles ; although the mere 
 circumstance that Plato has an alternative way of conceiving 
 it — the mythological way, not to mention the great attraction 
 which the mythological way plainly has for him — shows that 
 he was dissatisfied with the scientific proof of immortality — 
 entertained a doubt, to say the least, whether " the Soul is 
 immortal " ought to be regarded as a scientific truth. 
 
 Nor need Plato's doubt surprise us, when we consider the 
 state of opinion in the Athens of his day. Belief in personal 
 immortality had become very feeble among a large number of 
 educated and even half-educated people in Athens.^ For the 
 belief of the ordinary half-educated man, the Attic Orators, in 
 their frequent references to the cult of the dead, are our best 
 
 ^ Hegel, WerJce, vol. xiv. pp. 207 if. Coiitiirat {de Platmiis Mythis, Paris, 
 1896, pp. 84-88) agrees with Hegel. Grote {Plato, ii. 190, n. q.) expresses qualified 
 agreement: "There is ingenuity," he says, "in this view of Hegel, and many 
 separate expressions of Plato receive light from it ; but it appears to me to refine 
 away too much. Plato had in his own mind and belief both the Soul as a particular 
 thing, and the Soul as an universal. His language implies sometimes the one, 
 sometimes the other." That Coleridge would have endorsed Hegel's view is clear 
 from the following passage in Biogr. Lit. ch. 22. Speaking of Wordsworth's Ode 
 on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, he 
 says : "The Ode Avas intended for such readers only as had been accustomed to 
 watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture at times into the 
 twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a deep interest in modes of inmost 
 being, to which they know that the attributes of time and space are inapplicable 
 and alien, but which yet cannot be conveyed, save in symbols of time and space. 
 For such readers the sense is sufficiently plain, and they will be as little disposed 
 to charge Mr. Wordsworth with believing the platonio pre-existence in the 
 ordinary interpretation of the words, as I am to believe that Plato himself ever 
 meant or taught it." 
 
 - See infra, p. 72, where the passage is quoted. 
 
 2 See Jowett, The Oialogv£s of Plato, vol. i. 419 (Introduction to the Phaedo, 
 § 12). 
 
62 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 authorities. They seem to take for granted a belief very much 
 like that which Aristotle makes the basis of his remarks in 
 Eth. Nic. i. 10 and 11 ; and, like him, are concerned chiefly 
 to avoid TO Χίαν άφιλον, statements likely to wound tender 
 feeling. " The continued existence of the Soul after death," 
 says Eohde,^ " is not questioned by the orators ; but its con- 
 sciousness of what happens in this world is only affirmed with 
 deliberate uncertainty. Such qualifications as et τίνες των 
 τ€Τ€\€ντηκ6των \άβοΐ€ν τρόττω τινϊ του νυν ^^ι^^νομ,ενου 
 'πράγματος αϊσθησιν are frequent. Apart from the offerings 
 of his relatives there is little more to bind the deceased to this 
 world than his fame among survivors. Even in the exalted 
 language of solemn funeral orations we miss, among the con- 
 solations offered to the mourners, any reference to a higher 
 condition — to an eternal life of conscious blessedness attained 
 to by the famous dead." Here the Orators are in agreement 
 with that great master of the art of epitaph- writing, as Kohde'^ 
 well describes Simonides, " who has never a word assigning the 
 departed to a land of eternal blessedness," but places their 
 immortality entirely in the memory of their deeds, which lasts, 
 and will last, in this world : — 
 
 οΰδ€ τίθναχτί θανόντ€ζ, ίτηί σφ' άρζτη καθνττίρθίν 
 κνΒαίνονσ' avayec Βώμ,ατοζ e^ Άιδίω.^ 
 
 Similarly Tyrtaeus^ had identified αθανασία expressly with 
 κλέος : — 
 
 ovBe 7Γ0Τ€ kAcos ίσθλον άττόλλυται οΰδ' ονο/α' αΰτου, 
 αλλ' ντΓο -γης τηρ ίων ytyvcrat αθάνατο? — 
 
 His body is buried in peace, but his name liveth for evermore. 
 
 The Dramatists, too, did much to induce their public 
 to look at the dead in the same way; for the dramatic 
 interest required that prominence should be given to the pos- 
 thumous influence of the dead here rather than to their personal 
 
 ^ Psyche, vol. ii. pp. 202, 203 ; and see his important footnotes to these pages, 
 in which he gives references to H. Meuss {Uber die Vorstellungen von Dasein nach 
 deni Tode bei den attischen Rednern, Jahrb. f. Philol., 1889, pp. 801 if.), Wester- 
 mann (on Demosth. Lept. 87), and Lehrs {Popid. Aufs. 329 if.), for the views 
 expi-essed by the Attic Orators concerning the state of the departed. 
 
 ' Psyche, ii. 204. 
 
 '^ Simon. Epigr. 99, 3, 4, quoted by Rohde, Psyche, ii. 204, n. 1. 
 
 ^ Tyrtaeus, 12, 31 f., quoted by Rohde, Psyche, ii. 201, n. 3. 
 
INTKODUCTION 63 
 
 condition in another world. When the Dramatists put the 
 old national legends on the stage, attention was turned, as 
 Eohde^ points out, from the mere events of the story to the 
 characters and motives of the hitherto shadowy legendary 
 personages now presented, for the first time, clearly to sense. 
 The plots were well known, and not so curiously attended to 
 by the audience as the characters of the personages now mov- 
 ing before their eyes. Motives became more important than 
 events. The Dramatist had to combine the traditional story 
 of the legend with the motives of agents who must have the 
 hearts of modern men, or else not be understood by the audi- 
 ence. Hence the tragic conflict between events and motives. 
 It is fated that a good man shall do an evil deed. How can 
 he be responsible for such a deed, and merit the retribution 
 which the moral sense of the audience would resent if he did 
 not merit it ? This is the tragic άττορία which the Dramatists 
 solved, I would suggest, by taking the Family, rather than the 
 Individual, as the moral unit.^ The descendant is free because 
 he is conscious of doing the ancestral, the fated, thing — a 
 doctrine which Eohde,^ in ascribing especially to Aeschylus, 
 compares with the Stoic doctrine of σν^κατάθεσυ^,^ The 
 human interest of tragedy requires that the penalty for sin 
 shall be paid here on earth rather than in Hades. This is why 
 there is so little in the Greek Dramatists about the punish- 
 ment of the wicked in the other world for their own sins. It 
 is in this laorld that sin must be punished if the drama is to 
 have any human interest. Since the Family, not the Indi- 
 vidual, is the moral unit, it matters not that the sin punished 
 here is ancestral. Nay, the tragic effect is heightened when 
 the children suffer for the sins of their fathers. The dead 
 fathers live in their children : that is, for aught we can ever 
 know, the only life they have : — 
 
 rovs yap θανόντας el ^eActs evcpyeruv 
 
 etV ovv κακονργ€Ϊν, άμφιδίξίω'ζ €χ€ί 
 
 τφ μήτ€ χαίραν μήτ€ λνπ^Ισθαυ veKpovs.^ 
 
 1 Psijche, ii. 225. 
 
 2 See Plutarch, i^e sera numinis vindicia, 16, on the continuity of tlie Family, 
 and the justice of punishing children for the sins of fathers. 
 
 3 Psyche, ii. 229. 
 
 ^ Cic. defato, 18, where avyKaraeeais is rendered by adsensio. 
 ^ Aeschylus, /mgr. 266, quoted by Rohde, Psyche, ii. 232. "Under all circum- 
 stances," says Dr. Westcott {Eetigious Thought in the West, edit. 1891, pp. 91, 92), 
 
64 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 If the dead, then, are unconscious or barely conscious, the 
 living must be punished for the sins of the dead, that the justice 
 of the Gods may be satisfied.^ Aristotle did little more than 
 formulate the widely-prevalent opinion supported by Orators 
 and Dramatists, when he defined the Soul as " the function of 
 the body " — and Plato himself bears witness to the prevalence 
 of the opinion when he makes Glaucon express surprise on 
 hearing it suggested by Socrates that the Soul is immortal.^ 
 It had never occurred to Glaucon that the doctrine of the Soul's 
 immortality could be taken seriously. Socrates then offers a 
 " scientific " proof of its immortality — a proof which he offers, 
 I would sug gest, only or chiefly t hat he may supersede it by 
 the Myth of Er.2 
 
 So much for considerations which make it reasonable to 
 suppose that Plato, like many oth^s in_the Athens of his 
 day, felt at least serious doubt as to whether anything could 
 be known scientifically about the conscious life of the Soul 
 after death, if he did not actually go the length of holding, 
 as his disciple Aristotle did, that, as conscious individual, 
 it perishes with the body whose function it is. That, while 
 entertaining this serious doubt, Plato did not go so far as 
 Aristotle, seems to me to be shown by the manner in which 
 he allows himself to be affected by another class of opinions 
 
 " the view of the condition of the Dead, which Aeschylus brings out into the 
 clearest light in describing the condition of the Guilty, is consistent. The ful- 
 ness of human life is on earth. The part of man, in all his energy and capacity 
 for passion and action, is played out here ; and when the curtain falls there 
 remains unbroken rest, or a faint reflection of the past, or suffering wrought by 
 the ministers of inexorable justice. The beauty and the power of life, the mani- 
 fold ministers of sense, are gone. They can be regretted, but they cannot be 
 replaced. SorroΛV is possible, but not joy. 
 
 " However different this teaching may be from that of the Myths of Plato, 
 and the vague popular belief which they Λvitnessed to and fostered ; however 
 different, again, even from that of Pindar, with which Aeschylus cannot have 
 been unacquainted , it is pre-eminently Greek. Plato clothed in a Greek dress 
 the common instincts of humanity ; Aeschylus works out a characteristically 
 Greek view of life. Thus it is that his doctrine is most clearly Homeric. As a 
 Greek he feels, like Homer, the nobility of our present powers, the grandeur of 
 strength and wealth, the manifold delights of our complex being ; and what was 
 ' the close-packed urn of ashes which survived the funeral pyre ' compared with 
 the heroes whom it represented ? That * tear-stained dust ' was the witness that 
 man — the whole man — could not live again. The poet, then, was constrained to 
 work out a scheme of divine justice upon earth, and this Aeschylus did, though 
 its record is a strain of sorrow." 
 
 1 On the necessity of satisfying the justice of the Gods, see Rohde, Psyche, 
 ii. 232. 
 
 2 Rep. 608 D, on which see Rohde, Psyche, ii. 264, 265, and Adam, ad loc. 
 ^ See infra, p. 73. 
 
INTKODUCTION 65 
 
 opposed to the agnosticism of his time. I refer to the 
 opinions associated with the Mysteries and the Orphic revival 
 throughout Greece, and especially in Athens. The Eleusinian 
 Mysteries were the great stronghold in Greece of the doctrine 
 of a future life ; ^ and the same doctrine was taught, in 
 definite form, by the Orphic societies which appeared in 
 Italy and Sicily (in some cases in close connection with 
 the spread of Pythagoreanism) before the close of the 
 latter half of the sixth century. As Athens became more 
 and more the centre of Greek life, the Orphic cult gravitated 
 thither. We find it represented by Onomacritus at the 
 Court of the Pisistratids ; and, meeting the need of " personal 
 religion," felt especially during the tribulation caused by the 
 Peloponnesian War and the Great Plague,^ it had, in Plato's 
 day, become firmly rooted in the city. The sure hope of 
 salvation, for themselves and those dear to them, in a future 
 life, the details of which were minutely described, was held 
 before the anxious and afflicted who duly observed the pre- 
 scribed Orphic rites. The hope was all the surer because 
 it was made to rest on the consciousness of having one's self 
 done something ; it was all the surer, too, because the comfort 
 which it brought was offered, not to selfish, but to sympathetic 
 feeling — for even ancestors long dead could be aided in their 
 purgatorial state by the prayers and observances of their 
 pious descendants.^ 
 
 1 See Gardner's New Chapters in Greek History, p. 397, and Gardner and 
 Jevons' Manual of Greek Antiquities, p. 275. 
 
 '^ See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 105, 106. 
 
 ^ See important note (5), Rohde, Psyche, ii. 128, in which Rep. 364 b, c, e- 
 365 A is cited — especially 365 a, π€ίθοντ€$ . . . ws dpa λύσεΐί re καΐ καθαρμοί 
 αδικημάτων διί θυσιών καΐ TratSiSs ηδονών eial μέν ^τί ξώσιν, etVi δέ καΐ reXeim;- 
 σασίν, ά? δή reXeras καλουσίν, ά τών έκΐί κακών άττολύονσίν ημα$, μτ) θύσαντα$ 
 δέ δ€ΐνά π€ριμέν€ΐ — as showing that deceased ancestors could be aided by the 
 prayers and observances of descendants. Although the Orphic Fragm. 208 (cf. 
 Mullach, Fr. Ph. Gr.i. 188) Opyia τ' έκτίλέσουσι, λύσιν νροΎόνων άθβμίστων \ 
 μαώμενοί, σύ δέ τοΐσιν ίχων κράτος οϋί κ έθέλησθα | λύσβίί ίκ re ττόνων χαλ€ΐΓών 
 καΐ aireipovos οίστρου, quoted by Rohde in the same note, seems to make it quite 
 clear that dead ancestors could be aided by their descendants, I think that the 
 passage quoted from Hep. 365 a leaves the matter in doubt ; see Paul Tannery in 
 Eev. de Philol. October 1901, on reXerai {Orphica, Fr. 221, 227, 228, 254), who 
 explains the etVi μέν ^n ξ'ώσιν, βίσΐ 5e και τεΧευτησασι of Rep. 365 A to mean 
 that the expiatory rites clear the initiated person, some of them for the time of 
 his earthly life, some of them for his life after death. These latter are As δη 
 τ€\€τά$ καλονσί. TeXerat cannot affect any one except the initiated person 
 himself (to whom they supply directions as to his journey in the other world) : 
 they cannot clear an ancestor. According to this explanation, the reference in 
 Rep. 364 c, ehe τι αδίκημα του ^4yovev αύτοΰ ή προ-γόνων, is not to ancestors as 
 affected by the observances of their descendants, but to sin inherited from an 
 
 F 
 
66 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Now, what is Plato's attitude to this Orphic cult ? This 
 question can be answered, in part at least, without difficulty : 
 
 He derived the main doctrine, together with most of the 
 
 details, of his Eschatological Myths — the doctrine of the pre- 
 existence, penance, re-incarnation, and final purification of the 
 Soul — directly, and through Pindar, from Orphic sources, the 
 chief of which, if we accept the carefully formed view of 
 Dieterich, was a popular Orphic Manual, the κατάβασης 
 el<: AlBov, in which the vicissitudes endured by the immortal 
 Soul, till it frees itself, by penance, from the Cycle of Births, 
 were described — a work which lay at the foundation of 
 Pindar's theology, was ridiculed by Aristophanes in the Frogs, 
 was the ultimate source of the ^έκυιαι, of Plutarch and Virgil, 
 and greatly influenced Neo-Platonic doctrine.^ 
 
 Pindar, a poet and theologian after Plato's heart, whom 
 he always quotes with deep respect, was, we may suppose, 
 brought into contact with the Orphic cult in Sicily, where, 
 along with the Pythagorean discipline, it had found a con- 
 genial home.^ The difference between Pindar's outlook, and 
 that of the Athenian Orators and Dramatists and their 
 agnostic public, is very striking. In certain places he indeed 
 speaks of the dead as gone, their earthly fame alone 
 surviving. But this is not his dominant tone. Not only 
 have a favoured few — heroes like Amphiaraus — been trans- 
 lated, by a miracle, " body and soul," to immortal homes, but, 
 
 ancestor, which a man may cleanse himself of. I do not think, liowever, 
 that the reference in the λύσίν ιτρο-γόνων άθβμίστων of the Orphic fragment 
 quoted by MuUach (i. 188) and Rohde can be to this. 
 
 1 See Dieterich, Nekyia, 116-158 ; and cf. Jevons, Introduction to the 
 History of Religion, pp. 353, 354 : Orpheus had descended into Hades ; hence 
 came to be regarded as the author of verses descriptive of Hades, which were 
 current in thiasi, or disseminated by itinerant agyrtae. In Re^J. 364 e, 
 βίβλων δέ δμαδον παρέχονται Μνσαίου και 'Ορφ4ω$, the reference is, doubtless, 
 to this and other Orphic guide-books for the use of the dead. These Orphic 
 books may be compared with the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a guide for the 
 use of the Ka, or "double " (on which see Budge's Egyptian Ideas of the Future 
 Life, p. 163), which Avanders from the body, and may lose its Λvay ; cf. Petrie's 
 Egyptian Tales, second series, ρ 124 ; see also Eleusinia, by le Comte Goblet 
 d'Alviella (1903), pp. 73 if., on the connection between Greek and Egyjitian 
 guide-books for the use of the dead. To Dieterich's list of eschatological 
 pieces in literature inspired by the Orphic teaching we ought perhaps to add 
 the Voyage of Odysseus to Hades {Od. xi.) ; see v. AV'^ilamowitz-Mbllendortf, 
 Horn. Untersuch. p. 199, who supposes that the passage was put in by 
 Onomacritus, when Homer Λvas being edited at Athens in the time of the 
 Tyrants. 
 
 2 See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 216, 217 ; and, for the spread of the Orphic 
 Religion, Bury, Hist, of Greece^ chap, vii, sec. 13. 
 
INTKODUCTION 67 
 
 when any ordinary man dies, his Soul survives his body, and 
 that, not as a poor vanishing shade, but as a responsible 
 person destined for immortal life. The ψυχή, as Pindar 
 conceives it, is not the " totality of the bodily functions," as 
 the philosophers and the agnostic Athenian public conceived 
 it, but the Double which has its home in the body. This 
 Double comes from the Gods and is immortal : — 
 
 και ατωμα μ\ν ττάντων έ'ττεται 
 ό^ανάτω TrepLordevci, ζωόν 
 ο €Tt λ€ΐ7Γ€ται αίωνο<ζ ειδωλον 
 το yap ccTTL μόνον €κ θ€ωνΛ 
 
 Being of God, the Soul is necessarily immortal, but is 
 immersed in the body because of ancient sin — τταΧαών 
 ττύνθος. 
 
 At the death of its first body, the Soul goes to Hades, 
 where it is judged and recompensed for the deeds, good or ill, 
 done in the flesh. But its sin is not wholly purged. It 
 reappears on earth in a second body, at the death of which 
 it goes a second time to Hades, where its sin is further 
 purged. Then it returns to animate a third body on earth 
 (see Pindar, 01. ii. 68 it). Then, if these three lives on 
 earth, as well as the two periods of sojourn in Hades, have 
 been spent without fault, and if, when it returns for the third 
 time to Hades, it lives there without fault, Persephone, in the 
 ninth year of this third sojourn in Hades, receives the full 
 tale of satisfaction due for τταλαών ττένθος, and sends it back 
 to earth, to be born in the person of a Philosopher or King 
 (see Pindar, quoted Meno, 81 b), who, at his death, becomes 
 a holy Hero, or Daemon — a finally disembodied spirit : the 
 Soul has at last got out of the κύκλος γβζ/εσβωζ/.^ This is 
 
 ^ Pindar, fr. apud Plut. Consol. ad Apoll. 35. 
 
 2 I am indebted to Rolide {Psyche, ii. 207-217) for the substance of this sketch 
 of Pindar's Eschatology. In the last paragraph I have tried to combine the 
 doctrine of 01. ii. 68 ff. and the fragment, Men. 81 b. The life of Philosopher 
 or King is indeed a bodily life on earth, but it is not one of the three bodily 
 lives necessary (together with the three sojourns in Hades) to the final purifica- 
 tion of the Soul. The Soul has been finally purified before it returns to this 
 fourth and last bodily life which immediately precedes its final disembodiment. 
 In the case of Souls which do not pass three faultless lives here and in Hades, 
 the number of re-incarnations would be greater. Pindar's estimate seems to be 
 that of the time required in the most favourable circumstances. We may take 
 it that it is the time promised by the Orphic priests to those whose ritual 
 observances were most regulfif. According to Phaedrus, 249 a, however, it 
 would appear that a Soul must have been incarnate as a Philosopher in three 
 
68 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Pindar's doctrine — plainly Orphic doctrine, with beauty and 
 distinction added to it by the genius of the great poet. 
 
 Plato's Eschatological Myths also, like Pindar's poems, 
 plainly reproduce the matter of Orphic teaching. Is it going 
 too far, when we consider Plato's reverence for the genius of 
 Pindar, to suggest that it was Pindar's form which helped to 
 recommend to Plato the matter which he reproduces in his 
 Eschatological Myths — that the poet's refined treatment of 
 the Orphic μυθο^ helped the philosopher, himself a poet, to 
 see how that μυθο^ might be used to express imaginatively 
 what indeed demands expression of some kind, — man's hope 
 of personal immortality, — but cannot, without risk of fatal 
 injury, be expressed in the language of science ? It is Pindar, 
 as chief among divine seers who is quoted, in the Meno (81), 
 for the pre-existence, transmigrations, responsibility, and 
 immortality of the Soul ; but the Platonic " Socrates " is care- 
 ful to say that he does not contend for the literal truth of 
 the doctrine embodied in Pindar's myth, but insists on its 
 practical value in giving us hope and courage as seekers after 
 knowledge {Meno, 86 b). It is Pindar, again, who is quoted 
 at the beginning of the BepuMic (331 b) for that yXvKeia 
 cXtt/?, which is visualised in Orphic outlines and colours at 
 the close of the Dialogue, in the greatest of Plato's Eschato- 
 logical Myths. Orphic doctrine, refined by poetic genius for 
 philosophic use, is the material of which Plato weaves his 
 Eschatological Myths. And he seems almost to go out of his 
 way to tell us this. Not only is the Meno Myth introduced 
 with special mention of the priestly source from which it is 
 derived (Meno, 8 1 b), but even brief allusions made elsewhere 
 to the doctrine contained in it are similarly introduced — as in 
 the Fhaedo, 70 c, where the doctrine of the transmigrations 
 of the Soul is said to be derived from a τταΧαώς λόγο? ; in 
 the Fhaedo, 81a, where it is connected with what is said 
 κατά των μεμνημένων ; and in the Laws, 872 E, where the 
 
 successive lives before entering on the disembodied state : see Zeller, Plato, 
 Eng. Tr, p. 393 ; and cf. Phaedo, 113 d fi"., where live classes of men are 
 distinguished with respect to their condition after death — on which see Rohde, 
 Psyche, ii. 275, n. 1. "Έστρ-Λ έκατέρωθι," says Prof. Gildersleeve in his note 
 on Find. 01. ii. 75, "would naturally mean six times, έστρί^ may mean three 
 times in all. The Soul descends to Hades, then returns to earth, then 
 descends again for a final probation." I do not think that this last interpreta- 
 tion can be accepted. 
 
INTEODUCTION 69 
 
 τΓαΧαωϊ UpeU are referred to for the doctrine that, if a man 
 kills his mother, he must be born again as a woman who is 
 killed by her son. But, after all, the most convincing evidence 
 for the great influence exercised by Orphic doctrine over 
 Plato is to be found in the way in which he loves to 
 describe Philosophy itself in terms borrowed from the Orphic 
 cult and the Mysteries.^ Thus in the Phaedo, 69 c, 
 Kol KLvSvvevovai καϊ ο I τας τβλβτας ημΐν ovtol κατα- 
 στησαντ€ς ου φαΰΧοο elvai, άλλα τώ ovtl ττάλαι, αΐνίτ- 
 τβσθαί 6τ(, 09 αν αμύητος καϊ άτέΧεστος βίς '^Αώον άφίκηταί, 
 iv βορβόρω KeLaerac, 6 δε κβκαθαρμενος re καϊ rereke- 
 σμένος έκβΐσε άφίκόμβνος μβτα θέων οίκησβί, βίσΐ yap 
 8ή, ψασϊν οι ΊΓβρΙ τας τέλβτάς, ναρθηκοφόροί μβν ττοΧΚοί, 
 βάκ'χρυ δε τε ττανροί,. ούτοι δ' βίσΐν κατά την βμην Βόξαν 
 ουκ aWoL η οί ττβφιΧοσοφηκότβς ορθώς. Again, in the 
 Gorgias, 493 A, borrowing an Orphic phrase, he likens the 
 body, with its lusts, to a tomb — το μβν σώμα βστιν ήμΐν 
 σήμα — from which Wisdom alone can liberate the Soul (cf. 
 also Cratylus, 400 b); and in the Phaedrus, 250 B, c, he 
 describes Philosophy — the Soul's vision of the Eternal Forms 
 — as a kind of Initiation : καλΧος δε τότ ην iSeiv Χαμττρόν, 
 6τ6 συν €ύΒαίμονί χορω μακαρίαν όψιν τε και θεαν, εττό- 
 μβνοι μβτα μεν Αώς ήμεΐς, dWoL δε μβτ αλΧου θβών, elSov 
 τε καϊ ετβΧοΰντο *Γών τεΧετών, ην θέμις Χε^ευν μακαριωτά- 
 την, ήν ώρΎΐάζομεν όΧόκΧηροί μεν αύτοΙ οντες καϊ απαθείς 
 κακών οσα ημάς εν υστερώ χρόνω ύττέμενεν, οΧόκΧηρα δε 
 και άττΧά καϊ άτρεμή καϊ εύΒαίμονα φάσματα μυούμενοί τε 
 καϊ ετΓοτΓτεύοντες εν αύγρ καθαρά, καθαροί οντες καϊ 
 ασήμαντοι τούτου ο νυν σώμα ττεριφεροντες ονομάζομεν, 
 οστρεου τρόττον ΒεΒεσμευμενοι. Again, in the Timaeus, 44 C,^ 
 he speaks of the Soul which has neglected the ορθή τροφή 
 τταιΒεύσεως as returning, " uninitiated " and " without know- 
 ledge of truth," into Hades — άτεΧης καϊ ανόητος εΙς 'ΆιΒου 
 ττάΧιν έρχεται; and in the Symposiumy 209 Ε, in Diotima's 
 Discourse on έρως, the highest Philosophy is described as 
 τα τεΧεα καϊ εττοτττικά, for the sake of which we seek 
 initiation in τα ερωτικά.^ 
 
 1 See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 279. 
 
 2 See Arch^-Hind's note on Fhaedo, 69 c. 
 
 ^ See Couturat, de Plat. Mythis, p. 55. 
 
70 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Let us not think that this is " mysticism " — " the scholas- 
 ticism of the heart " ^ — such as we find afterwards in the Neo- 
 Platonic teaching. On the contrary, it is to be regarded 
 as evidence of the non-scholastic, concrete view which Plato 
 takes of Philosophy. Philosophy to Plato is not σοφία— a. 
 mere system of ascertained truth — but strictly ψοΧο σοφίοτ—- 
 βρως, child of ττόρος and άττορία, as the parentage is set forth 
 in Diotima's Myth in the Symposutm : Philosophy is not what 
 finally satisfies — or surfeits — the intellect : it is the organic 
 play of all the human powers and functions — it is Human 
 Life, equipped for its continual struggle, eager and hopeful, 
 and successful in proportion to its hope — its hope being 
 naturally visualised in dreams of a future state. These 
 dreams the human race will never outgrow, — so the Platonist 
 holds, — will never ultimately cast aside as untrue ; for the 
 young will believe in them in every generation, and the 
 weary and bereaved will cherish them, and men of genius — 
 poets, philosophers, saints — will always rise up to represent 
 them anew. The Philosophy of an epoch must be largely 
 judged by the way in which it "represents" them. How 
 much virtue Plato finds in " representation " — philosophical 
 and poetical — may be gathered from the fact that, while 
 he attaches the highest value to the Orphic doctrine which 
 he himself borrows for philosophical use, he ascribes the 
 worst moral influence to the actual teaching of the Orphic 
 priests.^ 
 
 I said that it is reasonable to suppose that Plato was 
 affected by the agnosticism which prevailed in Athens, and 
 felt, notwithstanding some "proofs" which he ventured to 
 offer, serious doubt as to whether even the bare fact of con- 
 scious immortality is matter of scientific knowledge.^ It may 
 
 1 "Der Mysticismus ist die Scholastik des Herzens, die Dialektik des 
 Gefiihls," Goethe, Spriiche in Prosa: Maximen und Befieximen: dritte 
 Abtheilung. 
 
 2 Republic, 364 e. In Aristoph. Ranae, 159, and Demosth. de Cormia, 259 ff., 
 the practices of the agyrtae, or itinerant celebrants of initiatory rites, are held 
 up to ridicule. 
 
 3 But see Zeller's Tlato, p. 408 (Eng. Transl.). Zeller holds that the fact of 
 immortality and future retribution was regarded by Plato as established beyond 
 doubt ; only details were uncertain. Couturat {de PL Myth. p. 112) thinks that 
 the whole doctrine of immortality in Plato is "mythic." Jowett (Introduction 
 to Phaedo) remarks that in proportion as Plato succeeds in substituting a philo- 
 sophical^ for α mythological treatment of the immortality of the Soul, "the con- 
 templation of ideas * under the form of eternity ' takes the place of past and 
 
INTEODUCTION 71 
 
 now be added, however, that his sympathy with the personal 
 religion, in which many took refuge from agnosticism, was 
 profound, and moved him to deal, in Myth openly borrowed 
 from the religious teachers, with subjects which Aristotle left 
 alone. Official (as distinct from personal) religion offers no 
 safe refuge from agnosticism. Eecognising this, Plato took 
 the matter of his strictly Eschatological Myths almost entirely 
 from the Orphic teaching, which presented religion as a way 
 of salvation which all, without distinction of sex or civil status, 
 simply as human beings, of their own free choice, can enter 
 upon and pursue.^ 
 
 future states of existence." Mr. Adam {Bep. vol. ii. p. 456) says, " that soul is 
 iminortal, Plato is firmly convinced : transmigration he regards as probable, to 
 say the least." 
 
 ^ See Gardner and Jevons' Manual of Greek Antiquities, Book iii. ch. iv. 
 " Orgiastic Cults," and Jevons' Introduction to the History of Religion, pp. 327- 
 374. "The leading characteristic," says Dr. Jevons {o.c. p. 339), "of the re- 
 vival in the sixth century B.C., both in the Semitic area, and as transplanted into 
 Greece, is a reaction against the gift theory of sacrifice, and a reversion to the 
 older sacramental conception of the ottering and the sacrificial meal as affording 
 actual communion with the God whose flesh and blood were consumed by his 
 worshippers. . . . The unifying efficacy (p. 331) of the sacrificial meal made it 
 possible to form a circle of worshippers. . . . We have the principle of voluntary 
 religious associations which were open to all. Membership did not depend on 
 birth, but was constituted by partaking in the divine life and blood of the sacred 
 animal." These voluntary associations formed for religious purposes — thiasi or 
 erani—'^ differed (p. 335) from the cult of the national gods in that all — women, 
 foreigners, slaves — Avere admitted, not merely members of the State." In short, 
 initiatio (μύησίί) took the place of civitas as the title of admission to religious 
 privileges. 
 
 Prof. Gardner closes the chapter on "Orgiastic Cults," referred to above, with 
 the following words: — "In several respects the thiasi were precursors of 
 Christianity, and opened the door by which it entered. If they belonged to a 
 lower intellectual level than the best religion of Greece, and were full of vulgarity 
 and imposture, they yet had in them certain elements of progress, and had some- 
 thing in common with the future as well as the past history of mankind. All 
 properly Hellenic religion was a tribal thing, belonged to the state and the race, 
 did not proselytise, nor even admit foreign converts ; and so when the barriers 
 which divided cities were pulled down it sank and decayed. The cultus of 
 Sabazius or of Cybele was, at least, not tribal : it sought converts among all 
 ranks, and having found them, placed them on a level before the God. Slaves 
 and women were admitted to membership and to office. The idea of a common 
 humanity, scarcely admitted by Greek philosophers before the age of the Stoics, 
 found a hold among these despised sectaries, who learned to believe that men of 
 low birth and foreign extraction might be in divine matters superior to the 
 Avealthy and the educated. In return for this great lesson we may pardon them 
 much folly and much superstition." Prof. Gardner pursues this subject further 
 in his Exploratio Evangelica, pp. 325 if., chapter on "Christianity and the 
 thiasi"; see also Grot'e's History of Greece, part i. ch. i. (vol. i. 19, 20, 
 ed. 1862). 
 
72 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 8. Summary of Introductory Observations in the form 
 OF A Defence of Plato against a Charge brought 
 
 AGAINST HIM BY KaNT. 
 
 Let me close this Introduction with a summing up of its 
 meaning, in the form of a defence of Plato against a charge 
 brought by Kant in a well-known passage.^ 
 
 The light dove, in free flight cleaving the air and feeling its 
 resistance, might imagine that in airless space she would fare 
 better. Even so Plato left the world of sense, because it sets so 
 narrow limits to the understanding, and ventured beyond, on the 
 wings of the Ideas, into the empty space of the pure understanding. 
 He did not see that, with all his effort, he made no way. 
 
 Here Kant brings against Plato the charge of " transcen- 
 dental use, or rather, misuse, of the Categories of the Under- 
 standing"^ — of supposing super-sensible objects. Soul, Cosmos, 
 God, answering to " Ideas " which have no adequate objects 
 in a possible experience, and then determining these sup- 
 posed objects by means of conceptions — the Categories — 
 the application of which ought to be restricted to sensible 
 objects. 
 
 In bringing this charge, Kant seems to me to ignore the 
 function which Myth performs in the Platonic philosophy. 
 I submit that the objects which Plato supposes for the 
 "Transcendental Ideas''^ are imaginatively constructed by 
 him, not presented as objects capable of determination by 
 scientific categories — that Plato, by means of the plainly non- 
 scientific language of Myth, guards against the illusions which 
 Kant, guards against by means of " criticism " ; or, to put it 
 otherwise, that Plato's employment of Myth, when he deals 
 with the ideals of Soul, Cosmos, and God — Kant's three Ideas 
 of Keaion — shows that his attitude is " critical," not dog- 
 matic. >l The part which the Myth of Er plays in the philo- 
 sophic action of the Republic may be taken as a specimen 
 of the evidence for this view of Plato's attitude. There is 
 nothing in the Bepuhlic, to my mind, so significant as the 
 
 ^ Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Einleitung, § 3. 
 
 * See Krit. d. rein. Fern. : die transc. Dialectik, Einleitung, 1. 
 
 3 "Ideas" in Kant's sense, not the Platonic ίδ^αι. 
 
INTKODUCTION 73 
 
 deep sympathy of its ending with the mood of its beginning. 
 It begins with the Hope of the aged Cephalus — " The sweet 
 hope which guides the wayward thought of mortal man ; " it \ 
 ends with the great Myth in which this Hope is visualised. | 
 As his Hope is sufficient for Cephalus, who retires to his 
 devotions from the company of the debaters, so is the Repre- 
 sentation of it — the Vision of Er — given as sufficient, in the 
 end, for the debaters themselves. To attempt to rationalise 
 here — to give speculative reasons for such a Hope, or against 
 it, would be to forget that it is the foundation of all our 
 special faculties, including the faculty of scientific explanation ; 
 and that science can neither explain away, nor corroborate, its 
 own foundation. The attempt which is made in the latter 
 half of the Tenth Book of the Republic to place the natural 
 expression of this Hope — man's belief in the immortality of 
 the Soul — on a " scientific basis," — to determine " Soul " by j 
 means of " Categories of the Understanding," — I_jregardjas ' 
 intended by the great philosopher-artist to lead up to the 
 Myth of Er, and heighten its eftect by contrast — to give 
 the reader of the Hepuhlic a vivid sense of the fu tility of I 
 rationalism in a regi on wher e Hope confirms itself by " vis ion • 
 splendid."^ ~™^ 
 
 Of course, I do not deny that passages may be found in 
 which the Ideas of Soul, Cosmos, and God are treated by 
 Plato, without Mythology, as having objects to be determined 
 under the scientific categories of Cause and Substance — e.g. 
 in Phaedrus, 245 E, and Phaedo, 105 c,^ we seem to have 
 
 1 "The argument about immortality {Rep. 608c to 612a)," says R. L. 
 Nettleship {Philosophical Lectures and Remains, ii. 355), " does not seem to be in 
 any organic connection either with what actually precedes or with what actually 
 foilows it. It would seem that Plato had two plans in his mind as to how to 
 finish the Republic" I cannot think that Plato had two plans in his mind. 
 The argument for the immortality of the Soul in Rep. 608c-612a is formally 
 so inconclusive that it is impossible to suppose Plato to be serious with it. The 
 equivocal use of the term Death {θάνατοι) in the argument could not have 
 escaped a logician so acute as Plato. The argument is, that, as Injustice (aSt/cia), 
 the proper vice {κακία) of the Soul, does not cause '= Death" {θάνατο$\ in the 
 sense of the separation of Soul from body, nothing else can ever cause " Death " 
 {θάνατοι), now, however, to be understood in the sense of the annihilation of the 
 disembodied Soul itself. 
 
 2 Grote {Plato, ii. 190) has an interesting note on PAoecio, 105 c,— "Nemesius, 
 the Christian bishop of Emesa, declares that the proofs given by Plato of the 
 immortality of the Soul are knotty and difficult to understand, such as even 
 adepts in philosophical study can hardly follow. His own belief in it rests upon 
 the inspiration of the Christiai^criptures (Nemesius, de Nat. Homin. c. 2, p. 55, 
 ed. 1565)." 
 
74 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 serious scientific argument for the immortality of the Soul — 
 indeed, it would be astonishing if there were no such passages, 
 for the distinction between Category and Idea, as understood 
 by Kant, is not explicit in Plato's mind ; but I submit that 
 I such passages fade into insignificance by the side of the great 
 ' Myths. We are safe in saying at least that, if sometimes 
 Plato lapses into a logical treatment of these ideals, or " Ideas 
 of Eeason," he is well aware that there is another way of 
 treating them, — in Myth, — and that he shows a marked pre- 
 ference for this latter way. 
 
 The Platonic Myth, then, effects its purpose — the regula- 
 tion of Transcendental Feeling for the service of conduct and 
 science — in two ways which we may profitably distinguish, 
 while admitting that the distinction between them was not 
 explicit in Plato's mind : (1) by representing ideals, and (2) 
 j by tracing faculties hack to their origins. In following either 
 of these two ways the Platonic Myth carries us away to 
 " Places " and " Times " which are, indeed, beyond the ken of 
 sense or science, but yet are felt to be involved in the concrete 
 " Here " and " Now " of ordinary experience. 
 
 The order in which I propose to take the Myths scarcely 
 amounts to an arrangement of them in two classes according 
 as the object is, either to represent ideals, or trace faculties to 
 their origins, for most of them do both. I shall begin, how- 
 ever, with the Myths which are mainly concerned with ideals, 
 and shall end with those which are mainly concerned with 
 origins. The former, it may be remarked, answer roughly to 
 the so-called Eschatological Myths — but only roughly, for 
 some of them are more properly described as Aetiological ; the 
 latter answer to the Aetiological Myths. 
 
 I shall take first the Myths in the Pliaedo and Gorgias, 
 and the Myth of Er in the BepuUic, — strictly "Eschato- 
 l ogical " Myths . — which present the Soul as immortal, free 
 within limits set by ανάηκ'η, and responsible, under God's 
 government, throughout all its transmigrations. 
 
 N ext I shall take the Myth s — mainly " Aetiologica l " — in 
 the Politicus, Fourth Book of the Laws, and Protagoras, where 
 God's creative agency, and government of the Cosmos and 
 Man, are broadly treated, and presented as consistent with the 
 existence of evil. 
 
INTEODUCTION 75 
 
 Then I shall go on to the Timaeus } in which the three I / 
 i deals, or " Ideas of Eeas on " — Soul, Cosmos, and God — are ' 
 represented in one vast composition. 
 
 Having examined these Myths — all chiefly interesting as \ 
 representations of ideals, or "Ideas of Eeason" — I shall 
 e xamine three Myths which are chiefly concerned with the 
 deduction of Catecrories or Virtues . These are the Myths in 
 the Fhaedrus, Meno, and Symposium. They are mainly con- 
 cerned with showing how man, as knowing subject and moral 
 agent, is conditioned by his past. Although the "Eschato- 
 logical " outlook, with its hope of future salvation, is by no 
 means absent from these three Myths, their chief interest lies 
 in the way in which, as " Aetiological " Myths, they exhibit 
 the functions of the understanding and moral faculty as cases 
 of άνάμνησίς which, quickened by βρως, interprets the par- 
 ticular impressions, and recognises the particular duties, of 
 the present life, in the light of the remembered vision of the 
 Eternal Forms once seen in the Supercelestial Place. 
 
 Having examined the Myths which set forth the Ideals 
 and Categories of the Individual, I shall end my review with 
 an examination of tw^o Myths which set forth respectively the 
 I deals and the Categories of a Nation — one of which gives us 
 the spectacle of a Nation led on by a vision of its future, 
 while the other shows us how the life of the "social organism " 
 is conditioned by its past. These are the Atlantis Myth , 
 introduced in the Timaeus and continued in the fragmentary ^ 
 
 Critias, and the Myth of the Earth-Born in the BepuUi c. The V 
 Atlantis Myth (intended to complete the account of the Ideal \^ 
 State given in the Republic) is to be regarded as an Eschato- 
 logical Myth ; but it differs from the Eschatological Myths of 
 the other class which have been examined in representing, not 
 the future lot of the Individual Soul, but the ideal which a 
 Nation has before it in this world — the ideal of a united 
 Hellas, under a New Athens, maintaining civilisation against 
 the assaults of outer barbarism. 
 
 After the Atlantis Myth I shall take the Myth of the 
 Earth-Born in the Republic ^ which is an Aetiological Myth, 
 
 1 Couturat, de Platonis Mythis (Paris, 1896), p. 32, Tmuieus ipse totus 
 mythicus est ; and Zeller, Plato, p. 160 (Eng. Transl), "The whole investiture of 
 the Timaeus is mythic — the Dtmiurgus, together with the subordinate gods, and 
 all the history of the creation of the Avorld." 
 
76 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 differing from the Aetiological Myths of the other class which 
 have been examined, in deducing, not the Categories — 
 faculties and virtues — of the Individual, but the deep-cut 
 characteristics of the "social organism." And yet, here 
 again, while Categories are deduced, an Ideal — that of the 
 orderly life of the καΧλίττοΧις — is represented. Indeed, this 
 is more or less true of all the Platonic Myths. They all 
 view man's present life sub specie aeternitatis — in God; 
 exhibit it as part of the great plan of Providence — as one 
 \ term of a continuous progress to be reviewed at once a parte 
 ante and a parte post. Especially in the Timaeus do we 
 see the " Genesis " and the " Apocalypse " of the Platonic 
 Mythology blended in one Vision. 
 
THE ΡΗΛΕΏΟ MYTH 
 
 Context of the Myth 
 
 In the Phaedo, the disciple from whom the Dialogue takes 
 its name tells some Friends what was said and done in the 
 Prison on the day of the Master's death. 
 
 Tlie conversation was concerning the Immortality of the 
 Soul, and was continued wp to the last hour. 
 
 Cehes and Simmias, the chief speakers, brought forward 
 arguments tending to show that, even granted that the identity 
 of Learning with Reminiscence is in favour of the Orphic 
 doctrine of the pre-existence of the Soul, yet its after-existence, 
 not to mention its immortality, is not proved. 
 
 Thereupon Socrates brought in the Doctrine of Eternal 
 Ideas — a doctrine which the company were already prepared to 
 accept — and showed, in accordance with it, that Life — and the 
 Soul is Life — excludes Death. 
 
 Thus was the Immortality of the Soul proved. 
 
 Next came the practical question : How must a man live 
 that it may he well with him both in this World and in the 
 World Eternal ? 
 
 It was then that Socrates, standing in the very presence of 
 death, loas filled with the spirit of prophecy, and made able to 
 help his friends before he left them : — If, he said, they took to 
 heart the Myth which he told them, they should know how to 
 live, and it woidd be well with them both now and hereafter 
 for ever. 
 
 Wlien he had finished the telling of the Myth, and had 
 warned his friends against a too literal interpretation of it, 
 he gave directions about his family and some other private 
 matters ; then the Officef came in with the Cup. 
 
 77 
 
78 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Phaedo 107c-114c 
 107 C Άλλα τόδε γ', βφη, ω άνΒρ€<ζ, Βίκαιον Ζίανοηθηναι οτι, 
 
 elirep η ψνχ^η αθάνατος, βττιμβλβίας Βη Ββΐται ούχ virep του 
 γρόρου τούτον μόνον, iv φ καΧουμβν το ζην, αλλ virep του 
 τταντός, καϊ ό κίνδυνος νυν Βη καΐ Βοξαβν αν Βεινος elvat, 
 €Ϊ τις αυτής άμεΧησει. el μεν yap ην 6 θάνατος του 
 τταντος ατταλλαγ?;, βρμαιον αν ην τοις κακοίς άττοθανουσι 
 του Τ€ σώματος άμα άττηΧλά'χ^θαι καϊ της αυτών κακίας 
 μ€τά της ψυχής' νυν Be eTretBrj αθάνατος φαίνεται ούσα, 
 
 D ουΒεμία αν εϊη αυτή άΧλη άττοφυ^ή κακών ούΒε σωτηρία 
 ττλην του ώς βεΧτίστην τε καϊ φρονιμωτάτην γενέσθαι. 
 ούΒεν yap άλΧο έχουσα εις '^ΑιΒου ή ψυχή έρχεται ττλήν 
 τής τταιΒείας τε καϊ τροφής, α Βή καϊ μεyιστa \εyετaι 
 ώφεΧεΐν ή βΧάτττειν τον τεΧευτήσαντα ευθύς εν αρχή τής 
 εκεΐσε ττορείας. Xεyετaι Βε ούτως, ώς άρα τεΧευτήσαντα 
 εκαστον 6 εκάστου Βαίμων, οσττερ ζώντα εΙΧήχει, ούτος 
 άyειv εττιχειρεΐ εις Βή τίνα τοιτον, οΐ ΒεΙ τους ξυXXεyεvτaς 
 
 Ε Β ιαΒ ι κάσα μεν ους εις ^ Α,ιΒου ττορεύεσθαι μετά ήyεμ6voς 
 εκείνου, ω Βή ττροστετακται τους ενθενΒε εκεΐσε ττορεύσαι. 
 τυχόντας δ* εκεΐ ών Βεΐ τυχεΐν καϊ μείναντας ον χρή 
 χρόνον άΧΧος Βεύρο ττάΧιν ήyεμώv κομίζει εν ττοΧΧαΐς 
 χρόνου καϊ μακραΐς ττεριοΒοις. εστί Βε άρα ή ττορεία ούχ 
 108 ώς ο ΑΙσχύΧου ΎήΧεφος Xεyει• εκείνος μεν yap άττΧήν 
 οϊμόν φησιν εις '^ΑιΒου φερειν, ή Β' ούτε άττΧή ούτε μία 
 φαίνεται μοι είναι, ούΒε yap αν ήyεμovωv εΒεΐ' ου yap ττού 
 τις αν Βιαμάρτοι ούΒαμόσε μιας οΒού ούσης. νυν Βε εοικε 
 σχίσεις τε καϊ ττεριόΒους ττοΧΧάς εχειν άττο τών οσίων τε 
 καϊ νομίμων τών ενθάΒε τεκμαιρόμενος Xεyω. ή μεν ούν 
 κοσμία τε καϊ φρόνιμος ψυχή εττεταί τε καϊ ουκ ayvoel 
 τα Ίταρόντα' ή Βε εττιθυμητικώς του σώματος έχουσα, 
 
 Β οΊτερ εν τω εμττροσθεν ειττον, ττερϊ εκείνο ττοΧύν χρόνον 
 ετΓΤοημενη καϊ ττερϊ τον όρατον τόττον, ττοΧΧά άντιτείνασα 
 καϊ ΤΓοΧΧά τταθοΰσα, βία καϊ μόyις ύττο του τΓpoστετay μενού 
 Βαίμονος οϊχεται άyoμεvη. άφικομενην Βε οθιττερ αϊ άΧΧαι, 
 τήν μεν άκάθαρτον και τι ττεττοιηκυΐαν τοιούτον, ή φόνων 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 79 
 
 Tkanslation 
 
 " It is meet, my friends, that we should take thought of 
 this : — that the Soul, being immortal, standeth in need of 
 care, not only in regard of the time of this present life, but in 
 regard of the time without end, and that 'tis now, even to-day, 
 that the jeopardy is great, if a man will still be careless of his 
 Soul. Were death riddance of all, 'twould be good luck for the 
 wicked man to die and be rid of body and soul and his 
 wickedness ; but inasmuch as the Soul is manifestly immortal, 
 no other escape from evil hath she nor salvation save this 
 — that she be p erfected in righteousness and wisdom. For 
 she taketh hence nothing with her to the House of Hades, 
 save only her instruction and nurture — that, to wit, where- 
 from they say the greatest profit cometh to the dead or 
 greatest damage straightway at the beginning of their journey 
 thither ; for when a man dieth, his own Familiar Spirit, which 
 had gotten him to keep whilst he lived, taketh and leadeth 
 him to a certain place whither the dead must be gathered 
 together; whence, after they have received their sentences, 
 they must journey to the House of Hades with him who hath 
 been appointed to guide thither those that are here; and 
 when they have received there the things which are meet for 
 them, and have sojourned the time determined, another Guide 
 bringeth them again hither, after many long courses of time. 
 The way, belike, is not as Aeschylus his Telephus telleth ; for 
 he saith that a single path leadeth to the House of Hades. 
 But, methinks, if it were single and one, there would be no 
 need of guides, for no man would go astray. Nay, that it 
 hath many partings and windings I conclude from the offerings 
 which men use to make unto the dead. 
 
 " The Soul which ordereth herself aright and hath wisdom, 
 understandeth well her present case, and goeth with her Familiar. 
 But the Soul which lusteth after the body, having fluttered 
 about it and the Visible Place for a long while, and having 
 withstood her appointed Familiar with great strife and pain, 
 is by him at the last mastered and carried away ; and when 
 she is come to the place where the other Souls are assembled 
 together, inasmuch as ^e is impure and hath wrought that 
 
80 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 αδίκων ημμβρην rj αλλ αττα τοίαντα €ίρ<γασμ6νην, α 
 τούτων άΒβΧφά τ€ καΐ άΒέλφων ψνχ^ων epya τνγχάνει, οντά, 
 ταύτην μβν άττας (j>evyev re και νττβκτρβττβταί καί ούτε 
 ξυνέμτΓορος οντ€ τρέμων iOeXei, yiyveaOaLy αύτη he ττλανάταί 
 
 C iv ττάστ) β'χρμίνη άττορία, βω? άν 8ή τίνες 'χρόνοι, Ύβνωνται, 
 ων ξξεΧθόντων ύττ ανάγκης φέρεται εις την αύτη ττρετΓουσαν 
 οϊκησιν' ή Βε καθαρώς τε καΐ μετρίως τον βίον ΒίεξεΧθονσα, 
 κα\ ξννεμττόρων καΐ ηγεμόνων θεών τυχούσα, ωκησε τον 
 αύτη εκάστη τόττον ττροσηκοντα, 
 
 ΈίΙσΙ Βε ττολλοί καΐ θαυμαστοί της ^ης τόττοι, και αύτη 
 ούτε οΧα ούτε οση Βοξάζεταο ύττο τών ττερί γής εΐωθότων 
 Χε^ειν, ώς iyo) υπό τίνος ττεττεισμαι, ΚαΙ 6 Χίμμίας, ΤΙώς 
 
 D ταύτα, εφη, Χέζεις, ώ Χώκρατες ; ττερΙ yap tol της γης 
 καϊ αύτος ττοΧΧα Βη άκηκοα, ού μεντοί ταύτα, α σε ττείθεί. 
 ήΒεως αν ονν άκούσαιμι. Αλλά μεντοι, ώ %ιμμία, ούχ ή 
 ΤΧαύκου yk μοί τέχνη Βοκεΐ είναι Βιηγησασθαι α y εστίν 
 ώς μεντοί άΧηθή, χαΧεττώτερόν μοι φαίνεται ή κατά την 
 ΤΧαύκου τέχνην, καϊ άμα μεν iyoo ϊσως ούΒ^ άν οΙός τε 
 εϊην, άμα Βε, εΐ καϊ ήττίστάμην, 6 βίος μου Βοκεΐ ο εμός, 
 ώ Ζ,ιμμία, τω μηκει του Χόγου ούκ εξαρκεϊν. την μεντοο 
 
 Ε ΙΒεαν της yής, οίαν ττεττεισμαι είναι, καϊ τους τόττους αύτης 
 ούΒεν με κωΧύει Χεγειν. 'Αλλ', εφη 6 '^ι,μμίας, καϊ ταύτα 
 άρκεΐ, ΐΐέττείσμαι τοίνυν, η δ' 6ς, εγώ, ώς ττρώτον μεν, εΐ 
 εστίν εν μέσω τω ούρανω ττεριφερης ούσα, μηΒεν αύτη Βεΐν 
 109 μητε άερος ττρος το μη ττεσεΐν μήτε άΧΧης ανάγκης μηΒεμιάς 
 τοιαύτης, άΧΧά Ικανην είναι αύτην ϊσχειν την ομοιότητα 
 του ουρανού αυτού εαυτω ττάντη καϊ της γης αυτής την 
 ΙσορροΊΓίαν' ίσορροττον γαρ ττράγμα ομοίου τινός εν μέσω 
 τεθεν ούχ εξει μάΧΧον ούΒ' ήττον ούΒαμόσε κΧιθήναι, 
 ομοίως δ' έχον άκΧινες μενεΐ. ττρώτον μεν τοίνυν, ή δ' 6ς, 
 τούτο ττεττεισμαι. Καϊ ορθώς γε, εφη ό %ιμμίας. 'Έτλ 
 τοίνυν, εφη, ττάμμε^ά τι είναι αυτό, καϊ ημάς οίκεΐν τους 
 
 Β μέχρι 'ϊΙρακΧείων στηΧών άττό ΦάσιΒος εν σμικρω τινι 
 μορίω, ώσττερ ττερΙ τεΧμα μύρμηκας ή βατράχους, ττερΙ την 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 81 
 
 which is impure, having shed innocent blood, or done like 
 deeds which Souls that are her like use to do, her all flee and 
 eschew, and none will be her companion or guide ; wherefore 
 she wandereth alone in great stress, until certain times have 
 been accomplished; then is she constrained to go unto the 
 habitation fit for her. But the Soul which hath lived all her 
 days in purity and sobriety hath given unto her Gods to be 
 her companions and guides, and she maketh her habitation in 
 the place meet for her. 
 
 " The Earth hath many and wondrous places, and it is of a 
 fashion and greatness whereof those who use to tell concerning 
 the Earth have no true opinion. There is one who hath 
 persuaded me of this." 
 
 " Socrates," quoth Simmias, " how sayest thou this ? for I 
 also have heard many things concerning the Earth, but not 
 this of which thou art persuaded. Wherefore I would gladly 
 hear it." 
 
 " Well, Simmias," quoth he, " methinks it needeth not the 
 skill of Glaucus to set forth that which I have heard; but 
 the truth thereof, which I wot it surpasseth the skill of 
 Glaucus to find out, haply I should not be able to attain 
 unto : nay, if I knew it, my life is too far spent, methinks, 
 for the length of the discourse which should declare it : but 
 my persuasion as touching the Earth and the places it hath 
 nothing hindereth me from declaring unto thee." 
 
 " That is enough," said Simmias. 
 
 " I am persuaded, then," said he, " of this first — that if the 
 Earth, being a globe, is in the middle of the Heaven, it hath 
 no need of air or any other like constraint to keep it from 
 falling, but 'tis sufficient to hold it that the Heaven is of one 
 substance throughout, and that itself is equally balanced : for 
 that which is itself equally balanced and set in the midst of 
 that which hath one substance, will have no cause at all of 
 inclining towards any side, but will continue the same and 
 remain without inclination. Of this first I am persuaded." 
 
 " And rightly," said Simmias. 
 
 " Moreover, I am persuaded that the Earth is very great, 
 and that we who inhabit unto the Pillars of Hercules from 
 the river Phasis dwell in a small part thereof, like unto ants 
 or frogs round about a ^ool, dwelling round this Sea ; and 
 
 G 
 
82 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ΘαΚατταν οίκοννταζ, καϊ αΧ\ον<ί aWoOc ττολλου? iv ττοΧΧοΐς 
 τοίούτοις τότΓΟίς οίκεΐν. elvai yap ττανταχτ) ττβρί την yrjv 
 ΤΓολλα κοίλα καϊ τταντοΒαττα καϊ τας ΙΒβας καϊ τα με^εθη^ 
 €19 α ξυνβρρυηκεναι τ6 τ€ ν8ωρ καϊ την ομίχΧην καϊ τον 
 aepa' αντην δε την yrjv καθαραν iv καθαρω κβΐσθαι τω 
 ου ράνω, iv ωττβρ βστί τα άστρα, ον Srj αΙθέρα ονομάζειν 
 
 C τού? ΤΓοΧΚονς των irepl τα τοιαύτα βίωθότων Xiyeiv ου Βη 
 ύτΓοστάθμην ταΰτα elvai καϊ ξνρρείν aei el<; τα κοΊΧα τη<; 
 y7j<s. ήμά<; ονν οΙκονντα<ζ iv τοΐς κοΙΧοις αύτή<ζ Χέληθεναι 
 καϊ οΪ€σθαι άνω iirl της yrj<i oiKCiv, ώσττβρ αν ei τίς iv μέσω 
 τω Ίτυθμένί του ττελαγου? οίκων οϊοίτο τ€ eVt της θαΧάττης 
 οΙκ€Ϊν καϊ Bta του ΰΒατος ορών τον ηλίον καϊ τα άΧλα 
 άστρα την θάΧατταν r/yoiTo ούρανον elvai, Βία Be βραΒυτήτά 
 
 Ό τ€ καϊ άσθένειαν μηΒβττώττοτβ βττΐ τα άκρα της θαΧάττης 
 άφLyμevoς μηΒε ίωρακως €Ϊη, iκBύς καϊ άνακύψας iK της 
 ΘαΧάττης βίς τον ivdaBe τόπον, οσω καθαρώτβρος καϊ 
 καΧΧίων τυyχ^άv€l ων του τταρά σφίσί, μηΒβ άΧΧου άκηκοως 
 €Ϊη του ίωρακότος. ταύτον Βη τούτο καϊ ημάς ττβττονθάναί' 
 οίκοΰντας yap ev tlvl κοίΧω της yής οϊεσθαι εττάι/ω αυτής 
 οΙκ€Ϊν, καϊ τον αύρα ούρανον καΧβΐν, ώς Bta τούτου ούρανοΰ 
 οντος τα άστρα γωρουντα. το Be elvat, τοιούτον ύττ* άσθε- 
 
 Ε νείας καϊ βραΒυτήτος ουχ οϊους re elvai ημάς ΒιεξεΧθεΐν 
 €7Γ έσχατοι/ τον aepa' iirei, eX τις αύτου iir άκρα βΧθοι ή 
 ΤΓτηνος yevoμevoς άνάτττοιτο, κατιΒεΐν αν άνακύψαντα, ώσττερ 
 ivOaBe οι iK της ΘαΧάττης Ιγθύες ανακύπτοντες ορώσι τα 
 ενθάΒε, οΰτως άν τίνα καϊ τα iκεΐ κατιΒεΐν, καϊ ει ή φύσις 
 ικανή εΐη ανε'χεσθαι θεωρούσα, yvoyvai άν, οτι iκεΐv6ς iστιv 
 110 ο αληθώς ουρανός καϊ το άΧηθώς φώς καϊ η ώς άΧηθώς 
 yrj, ήΒε μεν yap η yrj καϊ οί Χίθοι καϊ άπας ο τόπος ό 
 ivθάBε Βιεφθαρμενα iστϊ καϊ καταβεβρωμενα, ώσπερ τα iv 
 τη θαΧάττη ύπο της άλμης' καϊ ούτε φύεται ούΒεν άξιον 
 Xoyoυ iv τη ΘαΧάττη, ούτε τεΧειον, ώς έπος ειπείν, ούΒεν 
 iστι, σηpayyες Βε καϊ άμμος καϊ πηΧος αμήχανος καϊ 
 βορβοροί είσιν, οπού άν καϊ yi) rj, καϊ προς τα παρ ήμΐν 
 καΧΧη κρινεσθαι ούΒ^ όπωστιοΰν άζια. iκεΐva Βε αΰ τών 
 
 Β παρ ήμΐν ποΧύ άν ετι πΧεον φανείη Βιαφερειν. εΐ yap 
 Βεΐ καϊ μϋθον Xεyειv καλόν, άξιον άκοΰσαι, ω Χιμμία, οΙα 
 τυyχάvει τα iπϊ της yής ύπο τω ούρανω οντά. Άλλα 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 83 
 
 that many other men dwell in many other like places ; for in 
 all parts of the Earth are hollows, many, various in shape and 
 magnitude ; into these flow water and thick clouds and air, 
 and are therein gathered together; but the Earth itself is 
 lifted up clear in the clear Heaven wherein are the stars. 
 This Heaven is that which those who use to speak of these 
 things call the Aether, whose sediment is that colluvies which 
 is alway being gathered together into the hollows of the 
 Earth. We, then, who dwell in the hollows, being ignorant, 
 think that we dwell above on the Earth, even as he who had 
 his dwelling down at the bottom of the sea would think that 
 he was on the surface thereof, and beholding through the 
 water the sun and the stars, would conceit the sea to be 
 the heaven, inasmuch as, being sluggish and weak, he never 
 mounted up to the surface of the sea, and put forth his 
 head, and looked out at our place, and saw how far it 
 excelleth the things of his own place in purity and beauty, 
 neither had heard concerning it from another who had seen 
 it. This is our case : for we, dwelling in a hollow of the 
 Earth, think that we dwell upon the Earth itself; and the 
 Air we call Heaven, and think that it is that Heaven wherein 
 are the courses of the stars : whereas, by reason of weakness 
 and sluggishness, we cannot go forth out of the Air : but if 
 Ά man could journey to the edge thereof, or having gotten 
 wings could fly up, it would come to pass that even as fishes 
 here which rise out of the sea do behold the things here, he, 
 looking out, would behold the things there, and if his 
 strength could endure the sight thereof, would see that there 
 are the True Heaven and the True Light and the True Earth. 
 For the Earth here, with the stones thereof, and the whole 
 place where we are, is corrupted and eaten away, after the 
 manner of things in the sea by the salt wherein there is 
 brought forth nothing either goodly or perfect at all, but only 
 hollow rocks, and sand, and clay without measure, and miry 
 sloughs wheresoever there is also earth — things not worthy at 
 all to be compared with the things here that are fair, albeit 
 the things beyond do much more excel the things here in beauty. 
 " Wherefore, if ye desire of me a Tale, hearken to the Tale 
 of the Things that be beyond upon the Earth under the 
 Heaven." 
 
84 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 μ>ηVy €φη 6 ^ι,μμίας, ω ^ώκρατ€<ζ, ήμ€Ϊς ye τούτου τον 
 μύθου ήΒέωζ αν άκούσαιμ^ν. 
 
 AeycTac τοίνυν, βφη, ω βταΐρβ, ττρωτον μβν elvai τοιαύτη 
 η yrj αΰτη Ihelv, €Ϊ τι<ζ άνωθεν θβωτο, ώσττβρ αΐ ΒωΒβκάσκυτοι 
 σφαΐραι, ττοικίΧη, 'χρώμασι 8ΐ€ίλημμ€νη, ων καΐ τα ένθάΒε 
 
 C elvai, 'χ^ρώματα ώσττερ 8eίyμaτa, οίς Βη οι ypaφ6L<ζ κατα- 
 ^ρώνταί, €Κ€Ϊ δε ττασαν την yrjv εκ τοιούτων elvat, καΐ 
 ΊΓοΧύ €Tt εκ Χαμττροτερων καΐ καθαρωτερων η τούτων την 
 μεν yap aλoυpyή είναι, καΐ θαυμαστην το κάλλος, την Βε 
 χ^ρυσοειΒή, την Βε οση Χευκη yύψoυ η γ^ιόνος Χευκοτεραν, 
 καΐ εκ των άλΧων 'χρωμάτων ξυyκειμεvηv ωσαύτως, και ετι 
 ττΧειόνων και καΧΧιόνων ή οσα ημείς εωράκαμεν. και yap 
 αύτα ταύτα τα κοΐΧα αυτής, ΰΒατός τε και άερος εμττΧεα 
 
 Ό όντα, χρώματος τι εΙΒος τταρεχεσθαι στίΧβοντα εν Tjj των 
 άΧΧων χρωμάτων ιτοικιΧία, ώστε εν τι αυτής εϊΒος ξυνεχες 
 ΤΓΟίκίΧον φαντάζεσθαι. εν Βε ταύττ} οΰση τοιαύτη ανά Xoyov 
 τα φυόμενα φύεσθαι, ΒενΒρα τε καΐ άνθη και τους καρττούς- 
 και αΰ τά ορη ωσαύτως και τους Χίθους εχειν ανά τον 
 αυτόν Xoyov την τε Χειοτητα καΐ την Βιαφάνειαν και τά 
 χρώματα καΧΧίω' ων καΐ τά ενθάΒε ΧιθίΒια είναι ταύτα 
 τά άya^Γώμεva μόρια, σάρΒιά τε και ίάσττιΒας και σμapάy- 
 
 Ε Βους και ττάντα τά τοιαύτα' εκεΐ Βε ούΒεν 6 τι ου τοιούτον 
 είναι και ετι τούτων καΧΧίω, το δ* αίτιον τούτου είναι, 
 ΟΤΙ εκείνοι οι Χίθοι είσΐ καθαροί και ου κατεΒηΒεσμενοι 
 ούΒε Βιεφθαρμενοι ώσττερ οι ενθάΒε ύττο σηττεΒόνος και 
 άλμης ύττο των Βεΰρο ξυνερρυηκότων, ά καΐ Χίθοις και yjj 
 και τοις άΧΧοις ζώοις τε και φυτοΐς αΐσχη τε καΐ νόσους 
 τταρεχει. την Βε yήv αύτην κεκοσμήσθαι τούτοις τε άττασι 
 111 και ετι χρυσω τε και άpyύpω και τοις άΧΧοις αΰ τοΐ^ 
 τοιούτοις. εκφανή yap αυτά ττεφυκεναι, οντά ΤΓοΧΧά ττΧηθει 
 και μεyaXa και ττολΧαχου της yής, ώστε αύτην ΙΒεΐν είναι 
 θέαμα εύΒαιμονων θεατών, ζώα δ' eV* αυτής είναι άΧΧα τε 
 τΓοΧΧα και άνθρώττους, τους μεν εν μεσoyaίa οίκούντας, 
 τους Βε ττερι τον άερα ώσττερ ημείς ττερι την θάλατταν^ 
 τους Βε εν νήσοις, άς ττεριρρεΐν τον άερα, ττρος τη ηττείρω 
 ούσας' και ενϊ λόγω, οττερ ήμΐν το ΰΒωρ καΐ ή θάΧαττά 
 
 Β εστί ττρος την ημετεραν χρείαν, τούτο εκεΐ τον άερα, ο Βε 
 ήμΐν 6 αήρ, εκείνοις τον αιθέρα, τάς Βε ώρας αύτοΐς κράσιν 
 
THE ΡΗΛΕΌΟ MYTH 85 
 
 " Indeed, Socrates," quoth he, " we would gladly hear this 
 Tale." 
 
 " The beginning of the Tale, then, is this, my friend, 
 that the Earth itself, if any one look down on it from 
 the Heaven, is like unto a ball which is fashioned with twelve 
 leathern stripes, whereof each hath his own colour. These be 
 the colours whereof the colours here which limners use are as 
 samples ; but there the whole Earth is of such, yea of far 
 brighter than these and purer ; for one part is purple and of 
 marvellous beauty, and another part is like gold, and all that 
 part which is white is whiter than chalk or snow, and in like 
 manner unto other parts are portioned the other colours — 
 yea, and colours besides more than all those which we have 
 seen here and fairer; for even these hollows of the Earth, 
 being full to the brim of water and air, display a specific colour 
 wherewith they glisten in the midst of the variety of the other 
 colours, so that the face of the Earth seemeth, as it were, one 
 picture of many colours contiguous, without blot. 
 
 "According as the Earth is, so also are the things which 
 grow therein — her trees and flowers and fruits ; and so also 
 are her mountains, and her stones, which are polished and 
 transparent and of exceeding fair colours ; whereof the precious 
 stones here are fragments — sardian, jasper, smaragdus, and all 
 such : but in that place there is no stone which is not as these 
 are and fairer. The reason whereof is this, that the stones 
 there are pure, and are not eaten away or corrupted as are the 
 stones here by the rot and salt of that sediment which is 
 gathered together here, whereof come, unto stones, and earth, 
 and likewise unto beasts and herbs, deformities and diseases. 
 Now, the True Earth hath these things, and also gold and 
 silver and other things like unto them for her ornaments ; for 
 there they are not hidden but manifest, and are in abundance, 
 and of exceeding greatness, and in many places of that Earth ; 
 so that to behold it is a sight meet for the eyes of the blessed. 
 And on that Earth there are beasts of many kinds, and men, 
 whereof some dwell in the inland parts, and some round about 
 the Air, as we about the Sea, and some in islands encompassed 
 by the Air, hard by the mainland ; for that which Water is 
 and the Sea with us for our use, the Air is in that region, and 
 that which the Air is* with us, the Aether is with them. 
 
86 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 €'χ^ζΐν τοίαντψ', ώστ€ εκείνους άνοσους elvai καΧ 'χρόνον re 
 ζην ΤΓολυ Ίτλειω των ενθάΒε καΐ όψει καΐ άκοτ) και 
 οσφρησει ^ και ττάσι τοις τοιούτοις ημών άφεστάναι τη αύτη 
 άτΓοστάσει, ηττερ άηρ τε ΰΒατος άψεστηκε καΐ αίθηρ άερος 
 Ίτρος καθαρότητα, και Βη και θέων εΒη ^ τε και Ιερα αύτοΐς 
 είναι, εν οίς τω οντι οίκητας θεούς εϊναι, και φημας τε 
 και μαντείας και αισθήσεις των θεών καΐ τοιαύτας 
 
 C ξυνουσίας ηίηνεσθαι αύτοΐς ιτρος αυτούς' και τον <γε ηλιον 
 και σεληνην καΐ άστρα οράσθαι ύττ αυτών οϊα τυγχ^άνει 
 οντά, καΐ την άΧλην εύΒαιμονίαν τούτων άκόΧουθον εϊναι. 
 
 ΚαΙ ολην μεν Βη την yrjv ούτω ττεφυκεναι και τα ττερϊ 
 την yrjv τότΓους Β εν αύτη είναι κατά τα 'iy κοίλα αυτής 
 κύκΧω ΊτερΙ οΧην ττοΧΚούς, τους μεν βαθύτερους καΐ άναττε- 
 ΤΓταμενους μαΧΚον ή εν ω ημείς οίκουμεν, τους Βε βαθύ- 
 τερους οντάς το γάσμα αυτούς εΚαττον εγειν του τταρ 
 
 D ημίν τοτΓου, εστί Β ους καΐ βραγυτερους τω βάθει του 
 ενθάΒε εϊναι και ττΧατυτέρους. τούτους Βε ττάντας ύττο yrjv 
 εις άΧληΧους συντετρήσθαί τε ττοΧλαχτ), και κατά στενότερα 
 και ευρύτερα, και ΒιεξοΒους ε'χειν, η ττοΧύ μεν ΰΒωρ ρεΐν 
 εξ όΧΚηΧων εΙς αΧΧηΧους ώσιτερ εΙς κρατήρας, και άενάων 
 ΤΓΟταμών άμη'χανα μεγέθη ύττο την ^ήν και θερμών ύΒάτων 
 και ψυχ^ρών, ττοΧύ Βε ττϋρ καϊ ττυρος με^άΧους ττοταμούς, 
 ΤΓοΧΧους Βε ύ^ρου ττηΧού και καθαρωτερου καϊ βορβορωΒε- 
 
 Ε στερου, ωσττερ εν ΧικεΧία οι ττρο του ρύακος ττηΧοϋ ρέοντες 
 ΤΓΟταμοι και αύτος ο ρύαξ* ων Βη καϊ εκάστους τους τόττους 
 ττΧηροϋσθαι, ων αν εκάστοις τύγτ) εκάστοτε ή ττεριρροη 
 ηιηνομενη. ταύτα Βε ττάντα κινεΐν άνω και κάτω ώσττερ 
 αιωραν τίνα ενουσαν εν τη yrj. εστί Βε άρα αύτη ή αιώρα 
 οια φυσιν τοιανΒε τινά. εν τι τών γασμάτων τής ^ής 
 αΧΧως τε με^ιστον τυγχάνει ον και Βιαμττερες τετρημενον 
 112 Βι οΧης τής ^ής, τούτο οττερ 'Όμηρος Διτε, Χε^ων αυτό 
 
 τήλ€ μάΧ^ yxi βάθιχττον ύττο χθονο^ 1(ττι βψζθρον^ 
 
 ο και αΧΧοθι καϊ εκείνος και άΧΧοι ττοΧΧοϊ τών ττοιητών 
 Ύάρταρον κεκΧήκασιν. εις yap τούτο το χάσμα συρρεουσί 
 τε ττάντες οι ιτοταμοϊ και εκ τούτου ττάΧιν εκρεουσι- 
 yiyvovTai Βε έκαστοι τοιούτοι, Βι* οίας αν καΐ τής yής 
 ρεωσιν • ή δ' αιτία εστί του εκρεΐν τε εντεύθεν καϊ είσρειν 
 Β ττάντα τα ρεύματα, οτι ττυθμενα ούκ έχει ούΒε βάσιν το 
 1 φρονήα-ει. 2 ^χ^^^ 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 87 
 
 Moreover, their seasons are so tempered that disease smiteth 
 them not at all, and they live far beyond the measure of our 
 days, and as touching eyesight, and hearing, and wisdom, and 
 all such parts, are distant from us even as Air is distant from 
 Water, and Aether is distant from Air in purity. Also they 
 have groves of the Gods and temples wherein Gods verily are 
 dwellers ; into whose very presence men come, hearing their 
 voices and their prophecies and seeing them face to face. 
 Moreover, the sun and moon and stars are seen there as they 
 are truly ; and likewise in all things else the state of these 
 men is blessed. 
 
 " The Earth itself, then, and the parts that encompass the 
 Earth are thus fashioned. But the Tale also telleth that in 
 the Earth are many hollow places round about her whole girth, 
 whereof some are deeper and more open than this place we dwell 
 in, and some are deeper with a narrower mouth, and some are 
 shallower and broader : all these are joined together, having 
 channels bored under the Earth from one to another in many 
 places, some narrow and some wide, whereby passage is given 
 so that much water floweth from one into another, as into 
 bowls, and measureless floods of perennial rivers run under the 
 Earth, and streams hot and cold ; also much fire floweth, and 
 there are great rivers of fire, and many rivers of running mud, 
 some clearer, some thicker, even as in Sicily there run before 
 the fiery flood rivers of mud, and then cometh the fiery flood. 
 With these floods, therefore, each place is filled according as at 
 each time the stream floweth round unto each. Now, all these 
 waters are moved upward and downward by that in the Earth 
 which swayeth like a swing. And it swayeth after this wise. 
 There is a cavern in the Earth, which is the greatest of them 
 all, and, moreover, pierceth right through the whole Earth, 
 whereof Homer maketh mention, saying, 'Afar off, where 
 deepest underground the Pit is digged,' which he in other 
 places, and many of the other poets, call Tartarus. Now, into 
 this cavern all the rivers flow, and from it flow out again, and 
 each one becometh such as is that part of the Earth it floweth 
 through. The cause of all streams flowing out and flowing in 
 is that this flood hath no bottom or foundation. Wherefore it 
 
88 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 vypov TovTO, αΙωρ^Ιταν Βη καί κνμαίνβι, ανω καΐ κάτω, καυ 
 ο άηρ καϊ το ττνβνμα το rrepl αυτό ταυτον ττοιβΐ' ξυνίιτβταυ 
 yap αντω καϊ όταν βίς το έττέκβινα της >γής ορμήστ) καϊ 
 όταν €t9 το €7γΙ τάΒβ, καϊ ωσττβρ των άναπνβόντων act 
 eKirvel re καϊ avairvel peov το ττνβνμα, οντω καϊ €Κ€Ϊ 
 ξυναιωρούμβνον τω ύ^γρω το ττνζνμα Βεινούς τινας άνεμους 
 καϊ άμηγάνους τταρέχεται καϊ eiaiov καϊ έξών. όταν Τ€ οΰν 
 
 C όρμησαν υττο'χωρηστι το ΰΒωρ eh τον τοττον τον Βη κάτω 
 καΧούμενον, τοις κατ εκείνα τα ρεύματα Βια της γης είσρεί 
 τε καϊ ττΧηροΙ αύτα ωσττερ οί ετταντΧοΰντες' όταν τε αυ 
 εκείθεν μεν άτΓοΧίτττ), Βεΰρο Βε ορμηση, τα ενθάΒε ττΧηροΐ 
 αύθις, τα Βε ΤΓΧηρωθεντα ρεΐ Βία των ογετων καϊ Βία της 
 7^9, καϊ εΙς τους τόπους έκαστα άφίκνούμενα, εις ους 
 εκάστους οΒοττοίεΐταο, θαΧάττας τε καϊ Χίμνας καϊ ττοταμους 
 καϊ κρηνας ττοιεί. εντεύθεν Βε ττάΧιν Βυόμενα κατά της ^ης, 
 
 D τα μεν μακροτέρους τόττους ττεροεΧθόντα καϊ ττΧείους, τα 
 Βε εΧάττους καϊ βραδύτερους, ττάΧίν εις τον Ύάρταρον 
 εμβάΧΧεί, τα μεν ττοΧύ κατωτέρω η εττηντΧεΐτο, τα Βε 
 oXiyov' Ίτάντα Βε ύττοκάτω εΙσρεΐ της εκροής, καϊ ενια μεν 
 καταντικρύ rj εΙσρεΐ εξεττεσεν, ενια Βε κατά το αύτο μέρος' 
 εστί Βε καϊ ά τταντάττασι κύκΧω ττεριεΧθόντα, η άτταξ η 
 καϊ ΊτΧεονάκίς πτεριεΧί'χθέντα πτερϊ την yrjv ώσττερ οί οφεις, 
 εΙς το Βυνατον κάτω καθεντα ττάΧιν εμβάΧΧεν. Βυνατον δ' 
 
 Ε εστίν εκατερωσε μέ'χρο του μέσου καθιεναι, ττέρα δ' οι;. 
 άναντες yap άμφοτεροις τοις ρεύμασι το εκατέρωθεν 
 yίyvετaι μέρος. 
 
 Τα μεν ούν Βη άΧΧα ττοΧΧά τε καϊ μεyάXa καϊ 
 τταντοΒαττά ρεύματα εστί' τυy'χάvεί δ* άρα οντά εν τούτοις 
 τοις τΓοΧΧοΐς τέτταρ άττα ρεύματα, ων το μεν μέyίστov 
 και εξωτάτω ρέον ττερϊ κύκΧω 6 καΧούμενος 'Ω,κεανός εστί, 
 τούτου Βέ καταντικρύ καϊ εναντίως ρέων ^Κγέρων, ος Βι 
 113 έρημων τε τοττων ρεΐ άΧΧων καϊ Βη καϊ ύττο yrjv ρέων εις 
 την Χιμνην άφικνεΐται την ^ Α.'χερουσιάΒα, ου αί των 
 τετεΧευτη κοτών ψυχαϊ των ττοΧΧών άφικνούνται καί τινας 
 ειμαρμενους χ^ρονους μείνασαι, αι μεν μακροτέρους, αί Βε 
 βραγυτέρους, ττάΧιν εκΊτέμίΓονται εις τάς των ζώων yεvέσεις. 
 τρίτος Βέ ΤΓΟταμος τούτων κατά μέσον εκβάΧΧει, καϊ εγγύ? 
 της εκβοΧής εκττίτττεί εις τόττον μέyav ττυρϊ ττοΧΧω καόμενον. 
 
THE ΡΗΛΕΌΟ MYTH 89 
 
 swingeth and surgeth up and down, and the air and wind surge 
 with it ; for the wind goeth with it when it rusheth to the 
 further side of the Earth, and with it returneth hitherward ; 
 and even as the breath of living creatures is driven forth and 
 drawn in as a stream continually, so there also the wind, 
 swinging with the flood, cometh in and goeth out, and causeth 
 terrible, mighty tempests. Now, when the water rusheth back 
 into the place "beneath," as men speak, coming unto the 
 region of the streams which run through that part of the 
 Earth, it floweth into them and filleth them, as men fill 
 reservoirs with pumps ; but when it ebbs again from thence 
 and rusheth hither, it filleth again the streams here, which, 
 being full, run through their conduits and through the Earth, 
 coming severally to those places whither they are bound, and 
 make seas and lakes and rivers and fountains. Thence they 
 sink under the Earth again, and some, having fetched a longer 
 compass and some a shorter, fall again into Tartarus, some far 
 beneath the channel into which they were pumped up, and 
 some a little way beneath ; but all flow into Tartarus again 
 beneath the places of their outflowing. Some waters there be 
 that, coming forth out of the Earth at one side thereof, flow 
 in at the contrary side ; and some that go in and come out on 
 the same side ; and some there be that go round the whole 
 Earth and are wound about it once — yea, perchance, many 
 times, like serpents. These rivers pour their waters back 
 into Tartarus as low down as water can fall. Now, it can fall 
 as far as the centre in each way, but no further : each half of 
 the Earth is a hill against the stream that floweth from the 
 side of the other half. 
 
 " Now there are many great rivers of divers sorts, but 
 amongst these there are four chiefest : whereof that one which 
 is greatest, and floweth round the outermost, is that which is 
 called Ocean, and over against him is Acheron, which floweth 
 the contrary way, and flowing through desert places and also 
 under the Earth, cometh to the Acherusian Lake, whither the 
 Souls of the most part of the dead do come, and having 
 sojourned there certain appointed times, some longer, some 
 shorter, are again led forth to be born in the flesh. The 
 third river issues forth betwixt these, and, near unto the 
 part whence it issues forth, falleth into a great place burning 
 
90 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Koi Χίμνην 7Γ016Ϊ μβίζω της irap* ήμΐν θαλάττης, ζεουσαν 
 υδατο? καΧ ττηΧοϋ' evrevOev δε χωρ€Ϊ κύκλω θοΧβρος καΐ 
 
 Β ττηλώΒης, ττεριεΧίττόμβνος δε [rrj yrj] άΧλοσβ Τ6 άφίκνεΐται 
 καΐ Ίταρ^ βσγατα της ^Α'χερουσνάΒος Χίμνης, ου ξνμμι- 
 ^νύμενος τω vBaTL• ττεριέΧί'χ^θεΙς δε ττοΧΧάκις νττο ^ής 
 εμβάΧΧβυ κατωτέρω του Ύαρτάρου. ούτος δ* εστίν ον 
 Ιττονομάζουσι ΤΙυρίφΧε'γεθοντα, ου καΙ ο Ι ρύακες άττο- 
 σιτάσματα άναφυσώσιν, οτττ) αν τύγωσι της yής. τούτου δε 
 αΰ καταντικρύ 6 τέταρτος εκττίτττεί εΙς τόττον ττρώτον Βεινον 
 τε καΐ aypiov, ώς Χε^εται^ 'χ^ρωμα δε β'χρντα οΧον οίον 6 
 
 C κυανός, ον 8η εττονομάζουσι %τύ<γίον, καΐ την Χίμνην, ην 
 ΤΓΟίεΐ 6 τΓοταμος εμβάΧΧων, Στυγα. ο δ' εμττεσων ενταύθα 
 καΐ Βει,νας δυνάμεις Χαβων εν τω ϋ8ατί, Βύς κατά της γης, 
 ττεριεΧίττόμενος χορεΐ ενάντιος τω ΥίυρίφΧεγεθοντι καΐ 
 άτταντα εν ttj ^ΑχερουσιάΒί Χίμνχι εξ εναντίας' καϊ ούΒε το 
 τούτου ΰΒωρ ούΒενΙ μίγνυται, άΧΧα καϊ ούτος κύκΧω 
 ττεριεΧθων εμβάΧΧεί εΙς τον Ύάρταρον εναντίως τω 
 ΤΙυρίφΧεγεθοντί' όνομα δε τούτω εστίν, ως οΐ ττοιηταΐ 
 Χε^ουσί, Κωκυτός. 
 
 D Τούτων δε οΰτω ττεφυκότων, εττειΒαν άφίκωνταο οΐ 
 
 τετεΧευτη κότες εΙς τον τόττον, οΐ ο ΒαΙμων εκαστον κομίζει, 
 ττρώτον μεν ΒιεΒίκάσαντο οι τε καΧώς καϊ όσίως βιώσαντες 
 καϊ οι μη. καϊ οΐ μεν αν Βόξωσί μέσως βεβιωκεναι, 
 ττορευθεντες εττΐ τον ^Αχέροντα, άναβάντες α Βη αύτοίς 
 οχήματα εστίν, εττΐ τούτων άφίκνοΰνταί εΙς την Χίμνην, 
 καϊ εκεί οίκούσί τε και καθαφόμενοί των τε άΒικημάτων 
 ΒιΒοντες Βίκας άττοΧύονται, εϊ τις τυ ηΒίκηκε, των τε 
 
 Ε ευεργεσιών τιμάς φέρονται κατά την άξίαν έκαστος* οι δ' 
 αν Βοξωσιν άνιάτως εχειν Βια τα μεγέθη των αμαρτημάτων, 
 η ιεροσυΧίας ττοΧΧας καϊ μεγάΧας ή φόνους άΒίκους καϊ 
 τταρανομους ττοΧΧούς εξειργασμενοι, η αΧΧα οσα τοιαύτα 
 τυγχάνει οντά, τούτους δε η ττροσηκουσα μοίρα ρίτττει εις 
 τον Ύάρταρον, όθεν οΰττοτε εκβαίνουσιν, οι δ' αν ιάσιμα 
 μεν, μεγάΧα δε Βοξωσιν ήμαρτηκεναι αμαρτήματα, οίον ττρος 
 ττατερα η μητέρα ύττ οργής βίαιόν τι ττράξαντες, και, 
 114 μεταμεΧον αύτοΐς, τον ςίΧΧον βίον βιώσιν, ή άνΒροφόνοι 
 τοιουτω τινι άΧΧω τρόττω γενωνται, τούτους δε εμττεσεΐν 
 μεν εις τον Ύάρταρον ανάγκη, εμττεσόντας δε αυτούς καϊ 
 ενιαυτον εκεί γενομένους εκβάΧΧει το κύμα, τους μεν 
 
THE ΡΗΛΕΌΟ MYTH 91 
 
 with much fire, and maketh a lake greater than our Sea, 
 seething with water and mud : thence it fetch eth a compass, 
 and going thick and muddy, and winding round the Earth, 
 cometh at last unto the coasts of the Acherusian Lake, mixing 
 not with the water thereof. Then after many windings under 
 the Earth it poureth itself into a lower part of Tartarus. 
 This is the river which they name Pyriphlegethon, whereof 
 also the fiery floods which boil up in divers places of the 
 Earth are derivations. Over against him the fourth river 
 issues forth, first into a fearful savage place, they tell, which 
 hath wholly the colour of blue steel ; and they call it the 
 Stygian place, and the Lake which the river maketh with his 
 flood they call Styx ; wherein to this river falling conceiveth 
 mighty virtues in his water, and afterward sinketh under the 
 Earth, and windeth round, going contrary to Pyriphlegethon, 
 and cometh to the Acherusian Lake from the contrary side : 
 neither doth his water mix with any; but he also goeth 
 round about, and falleth into Tartarus over against Pyri- 
 phlegethon. The name of this river, the poets tell, is 
 Cocytus. 
 
 " When the dead are come unto the place whither his 
 Familiar bringeth each, first are they judged, and according 
 as they have lived righteous and godly lives, or lived un- 
 righteously, are they divided. Thereafter all those who are 
 deemed to have lived indifferently well journey unto Acheron, 
 and go on board the vessels which are prepared for them, and 
 so come to the Lake ; and abiding there, get themselves 
 cleansed, and paying the price of their evil deeds, are 
 acquitted from the guilt thereof; and for their good deeds 
 receive each the reward that is meet. But whoso are deemed 
 incurable by reason of the greatness of their sins, robbers of 
 temples, and those who have oftentimes shed blood unlaw- 
 fully, or wrought other iniquities that are great, them the 
 appointed Angel doth cast into Tartarus, and thence they 
 come not out at all : and whoso are deemed to have com- 
 mitted sins great but curable, who in wrath have violently 
 entreated father or mother and have repented them thereof 
 all the days of their lives thereafter, or who in like manner are 
 manslayers, they must needs fall into Tartarus, but when they 
 have been there one year, the surge casts them forth, the 
 
92 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 άνΒροφόνονς κατά τον Κωκντόρ, τους Be ττατραΧοίας καΙ 
 μητράλοίας κατά τον VLvpL(\>\eyeeovTa' eireihav 8k φβρόμβ- 
 VOL ^ένωνται κατά την Χίμνην την Αχερουσ^αδα, έντανθα 
 βοωσί τ€ καΐ καΧοΰσιν, οί μεν ους άττβκτβιναν, οί Se ους 
 
 Β ύβρισαν, καΧεσαντες δ' Ικετβύονσι καΐ Βεονταυ idaac σφάς 
 €κβήναι eh την Χίμνην καΐ Βέξασθαί, καΐ eav μεν ττείσωσιν, 
 Ικβαίνουσί τ€ κα\ Χη^ουσι των κακών, el Be μη, φέρονται 
 αύθις eh τον Ύάρταρον KaKeWev ττάΧιν eh τους ττοταμονς, 
 και ταύτα ιτάσγοντες ου ττροτερον τταύονται, ττρίν αν 
 ττείσωσιν ους ηΒίκησαν αΰτη yap η Βίκη ύττο των 
 Βικαστών αύτοΐς ετά'χθη. οι Be Βη αν Βόξωσι Βιαφεροντως 
 ττρος το οσίως βιωναι, ουτοί eiaiv οί τώνΒε μεν των τόττων 
 των ev τη yfj εΧευθερούμενοί τε και άτταΧΧαττόμενοι ωσπτερ 
 
 C Βεσμωτηρίων, άνω Βε εh την καθαραν οίκησιν άφικνούμενοι 
 και €7Γΐ της γης οίκιζομενοι. τούτων Βε. αυτών οι φιΧοσοφία 
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 eh τον εττεντα 'χ^ρόνον, και eh οικήσεις ετι τούτων καΧΧίους 
 άφικνουνται, ας ούτε ραΒιον ΒηΧώσαι οΰτε 6 'χ^ρόνος ικανός 
 εν τω τταρόντι. 
 
 Αλλά τούτων Βή ένεκα 'χρή ών ΒιεΧηΧύθαμεν, ώ 
 Έ^ιμμία, τταν ττοιεΐν, ώστε αρετής και φρονήσεως εν τω βίω 
 μετασ'χεΐν καΧον yap το άθΧον καΐ ή βλττΐ? μεyάXη, 
 
THE ΡΗΛΕΌΟ MYTH 93 
 
 manslayers by Cocytus, and the slayers of father or mother 
 by Pyriphlegethon ; and when they are carried down and are 
 come to the Acherusian Lake, there they cry out aloud unto 
 those whom they slew or used despitefuUy, and call upon them 
 and beseech them with prayers that they will suffer them to 
 come out into the Lake and will receive them ; and if they 
 prevail, they come out and cease from their torments ; but if 
 they prevail not, they are carried back into Tartarus, and 
 thence again into the rivers, and they cease not from this 
 torment till they have prevailed with those whom they have 
 wronged ; for this was the doom that was appointed of the 
 Judges unto them. But whosoever are deemed to have been 
 godly above others in their lives, they are released from these 
 places in the Earth, and depart from them as from a prison- 
 house, and come unto the Pure Mansions which are above, and 
 dwell upon the Earth. And of these whoso have cleansed 
 themselves throughly by Wisdom live without fleshly bodies 
 for evermore, and come to yet fairer Mansions, whereof it 
 is not easy to tell, nor doth the time now suffice for the 
 telling. Nevertheless, by that which hath been told are we 
 admonished to do all so that we may lay hold of Kighteousness 
 and Wisdom in this life ; for the prize is fair and the hope 
 is great." 
 
94 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Observations on the Phaedo Myth 
 I 
 
 We may begin by noting that Plato here, as elsewhere, 
 gives verisimilitude to Myth by making it explain facts, or 
 what he accepts as facts, and bringing it, as far as possible, 
 into conformity with the " modern science " of his day. The 
 fact of the Earth's rotundity had already been ascertained — 
 or guessed — in Plato's day ; ^ and the geography of the Myth 
 is made consistent with this fact, as well as with the supposed 
 " fact " of the Earth's central position in the Cosmos — a 
 position which it retains for a sufficient reason, which Plato 
 sets forth " scientifically." The Phaedo Myth, starting with 
 the " scientific truths " of the Earth's rotundity and central 
 position, gives a consistent geography, which makes it easy 
 for the reader to localise the " Earthly Paradise " and Tartarus, 
 as real places continuous with the part of the world which 
 men inhabit. Geo graphy is treated in this Myth, as ancient 
 h istor y may, or must, be treated according to Plato — romanti- 
 call y : the general scheme is, as far as possible, true to facts ; 
 but blanks are filled in by μ.υθοΚ.οψα? The line between 
 uncritical " science " and μ,υθόΚο^ία is difficult to draw, and 
 Plato knows how to turn the difficulty to artistic, and more 
 than that — to philosophic use. A sophistic use of the difficulty 
 he happily has no temptation to make, because he holds no 
 brief obliging him to contend for a large amount of literal 
 truth in the traditional myths which he borrows. 
 
 Again, the Phaedo Myth recommends itself to the " scien- 
 tific mind " by explaining the origin of hot and cold springs, 
 volcanic action, winds, and, I think, the tides of the Atlantic 
 Ocean. The suggestion, too, that gems — objects which have 
 
 1 See ZqWqvs Plato, Engl. Transl. pp. 379, 380. 
 
 ^ See E^puhlic, 382 d, koI iu als νυν δή έλέΎομβν rats μυθολοΎίαΐί, δίά τό μη 
 (ίδέναι ό'τΓτ? τάληθβί ^χβι wepl των τταλαιών, άφομοωΰντεί τφ άληθεΐ τό ψευδοί Οτι 
 μάλιστα οϋτω χρήσιμον ποιοΰμεν ; καΐ μάλα, ^ δ' 8s. Cf. Legg. 682 ff., where the 
 early ^history of mankind appears as a my th, ' founded on fact, but embellished— 
 τΓολλών των κατ^ άΧήθβιαν "γι-^νομένων ξύν τισι χάρισι καΐ Μουσαίε έφάττεται 
 εκάστοτε ; and cf. Campbell's Politicus, Introd. p. xxxi. 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 95 
 
 always been regarded with wonder, as possessing mysterious 
 virtues — are fragments which have found their way down to 
 this part of the world from the rocks of the " Earthly Para- 
 dise," is a touch of fine imagination which helps to bring the 
 two regions — our part of the world and the " Earthly Para- 
 dise " — into physical connection.^ Tartarus and the True 
 Surface of the Earth, or Earthly Paradise, are indeed real 
 places to which there are real approaches for the ghostly 
 travellers from this οίκου μένη. The care, half playful, 
 half earnest, which Plato takes to prove this scientifically 
 from observed effects — volcanoes, tides, precious stones — 
 has its parallel in the method of Dante and other great 
 masters of Myth. Skilful use of " modern science " is indeed 
 one of the marks of the great master. Before referring to 
 Dante for this, let me first compare Plato's delicate handling of 
 " science " in the Phaedo Myth with the work of one who is cer- 
 tainly not a great master of Myth — the Cambridge Platonist, 
 Dr. Henry More ; but let me preface his " Myth " with a few 
 words explanatory of the " science " which serves as foundation 
 to his " mythology." 
 
 The Spirit of Nature, according to More and his school, 
 is an incorporeal substance, without sense, diffused through 
 the whole universe, exercising 'plastic power, producing 
 those phenomena which cannot be explained mechanically.^ 
 This plastic principle in nature explains " sympathetic 
 cures," the " astral bodies " (the phrase More borrows 
 from the Paracelsians) of witches, in which they appear as 
 hares, cats, weasels (so that if the hare or other animal is 
 wounded, the witch is found to be similarly wounded — More 
 was a firm believer in all that, and could give " scientific " 
 reasons for his belief), the growth of plants and embryos, and 
 the instincts of animals, such as the nest- building instinct of 
 birds, the cocoon-spinning instinct of silk-worms.^ The Soul 
 of man partakes in this plastic principle, and by means of it 
 constructs for herself a body terrestrial, aerial, or aethereal 
 {i.e. celestial), according as the stage of her development has 
 
 ^ Cf. Conv. iv. 20, p. 323, Oxf. Dante : "Ecosi e difinita questa nostra Bonta, 
 la quale in noi similmente discende da sorama e spirituale Virtu, come virtute in 
 pietra da corpo nobilissimo celestiale. 
 
 2 More's Immortality of the Soul, book iii. ch. 12. 
 
 ^ More, o.c. iii. 13. 
 
96 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 brought her into vital relation with the vehicle of earth, air, 
 or aether. " As we see," he says,^ " that the 'perceptive part of 
 the Soul is vitally affected with that which has no life in it, 
 so it is reasonable that the plastich part thereof may be so too ; 
 that there may be an Harmony betwixt matter thus and thus 
 modified, and that Power that we call plastick that is utterly 
 devoid of all perception. And in this alone consists that which 
 we call Vital Congruity in the prepared matter either to be 
 organised or already shaped into the perfect form of an Ani- 
 mal." He then lays it down as an " axiome " ^ that " there 
 is a Triple Vital Congruity in the Soul, namely, Aethereal, 
 Aerial, and Terrestrial " ; and proceeds : " That this is the 
 common opinion of the Flatonists, I have above intimated 
 {Immortality of the Soul, ii. 14). That this opinion is also 
 true in itself, appears from the foregoing axiome. Of the 
 Terrestrial Congruity there can be no doubt ; and as little can 
 there be but that at least one of the other two is to be granted, 
 else the Soul would be released from all vital union with 
 matter after Death. Wherefore she has a vital aptitude, at 
 least, to unite with Aire. But Aire is a common receptacle 
 of bad and good spirits (as the Earth is of all sorts of men 
 and beasts), nay, indeed, rather of those that are in some sort 
 or other bad, than of good, as it is upon Earth. But the Soul 
 of man is capable of very high refinements, even to a condition 
 purely angelical, whence Eeason will judge it fit, and all Anti- 
 quity has voted it, that the souls of men arrived to such 
 a due pitch of purification must at last obtain Celestial 
 vehicles." 
 
 The Soul, by means of her plastic power, moulds the 
 vehicle — earth, air, or aether — to any form she pleases; but 
 having been first habituated to the human shape in the terres- 
 trial body, she naturally moulds the aerial and celestial 
 vehicles to the same shape. This is why ghosts (in whom 
 More is a firm believer),^ being the Souls of the departed in 
 their aerial bodies, are easily recognised by their features, when 
 
 1 More, o.c. ii. 14. 2 ^q^q^ qx. iii. 28. 
 
 3 See ImmoHality of the Soul, ii. 16, for the wonderfully well-told story of 
 Marsilius Ficinus appearing (by arrangement) on the day of his death to his 
 friend Michael Mercatiis. He rides up to Micliael's window on a white 
 horse, saying, "Michael, Michael, vera sunt ilia." Michael sends to Florence, 
 and finds that Marsilius died the same hour his ghost appeared at the 
 window. 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 97 
 
 they return to the scenes of their terrestrial life.^ Now, it 
 may be asked what the effect of the Final Destruction of the 
 World by Fire at the Last Day will be on the human souls 
 which then have still only terrestrial bodies, and on the human 
 souls and souls of Daemons (or Angels) which have still only 
 aerial bodies. These bodies, unless saved by a miracle, will be 
 burnt up, and their souls, having no vehicles, will cease to live 
 the life of active consciousness.^ Therefore, More argues,^ using 
 Stoical terms, an άττοκατάστασις and TraXLyyeveaia after the 
 άνάστασις and βκττύρωσίς would not meet their case ; for a 
 soul whose body had been burnt would have ceased to be con- 
 scious, and irdXiyyeveaia would only bring it back to con- 
 sciousness a different being. It will require supernatural 
 means to rescue the souls of good men and Daemons (or 
 Angels) at the time of the Final Conflagration, or even 
 
 1 Cf. More's Philosophical Poems, p. 260 (ed. 1647) :— 
 
 In shape they walk much like to what they bore 
 Upon the Earth : for that light Orb of Air 
 Which they inact must yielden evermore 
 To Phansie's beck, so when the Souls appear 
 To their own selves alive as once they were, 
 So cloath'd and conversant in such a place, 
 The inward eyes of Phansie thither stear 
 Their gliding vehicle, that bears the face 
 Of him that liv'd, that men may reade what Wight it was. 
 
 Similarly Dante (Purg. xxv. 91-99) explains the aerial bodies of the souls in 
 Purgatory : — 
 
 Ε come Γ aer, quand' e ben piorno. 
 
 Per Γ altrui raggio che in se si riflette, 
 
 Di diversi color diventa adorno, 
 Cosi Γ aer vicin quivi si mette 
 
 In quella forma che in lui suggella 
 
 Virtualmente Γ alma che ristette : 
 Ε simigliante poi alia fiammella 
 
 Che segue il foco la 'vunque si muta, 
 
 Segue alio spirto sua forma novella. 
 
 See also More's ImTnortality of the Soul, iii. 1, § 8, p. 149, where it is stated 
 that the Soul, although she has a marvellous power, by the i'mjpmMm of her will, 
 of changing the temper and shape of her aerial vehicle, and of solidifying it so 
 that it reflects light and becomes visible, she has a much greater power over her 
 aethereal vehicle. The aethereally embodied soul can temper the solidity of her 
 vehicle (see Immortality of the Soul, p. 233), so as to ascend or descend, and 
 pass from one "vortex " to another. More looks forward (Defence of the Moral 
 Cabbala, eh. ii. p. 165) to the Millennium as the time when, instead of occasional 
 communications between souls terrestrially and aethereally embodied, there will 
 be close and constant intercourse. 
 
 2 **The very nature of the Soul, as it is a Soul, is an aptitude of informing 
 or actuating Body." — More's Defence of the Moral Cabbala, ch. ii. p. 167, 
 ed. 1662. • 
 
 ^ More, Immortality of the Soul, iii. 18. 
 
 Η 
 
98 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 before that time, when the extinction of the sun — presaged 
 by his spots recently discovered by one Shiner ^ — takes place. 
 Neither terrestrial nor aerial bodies could, without the interven- 
 tion of a miracle, survive such heat or such cold. But it is only 
 in this lower part of the universe that such destructive agencies 
 can operate. The aethereal region will not be affected by 
 them ; and souls which have reached the stage of aethereal 
 or celestial embodiment will remain unharmed. 
 
 So much for the " science " which serves to give plausibility 
 to the following Myth, as we may well call it : — 
 
 The greatest difficulty is to give a rational account whence 
 the Bad Genii have their food, in their execrable Feasts, so formally 
 made up into dishes. That the materials of it is a vaporous Aire, 
 appears as well from the faintness and emptiness of them that 
 have been entertained at those Feasts, as from their forbidding the 
 use of Salt at them, it having a virtue of dissolving of all aqueous 
 substances, as well as hindering their congelation. But how Aire 
 is moulded up into that form and consistency, it is very hard to 
 conceive : whether it be done by the mere power of Imagination 
 upon their own Vehicles, first dabled in some humidities that 
 are the fittest for their design, which they change into these forms 
 of Viands, and then withdraw, when they have given them such 
 a figure, colour, and consistency, with some small touch of such 
 a sapour or tincture; or whether it be the priviledge of these 
 Aereal Creatures, by a sharp Desire and keen Imagination, to pierce 
 the Spirit of Nature, so as to awaken her activity, and engage 
 her to the compleating in a moment, as it were, the full design of 
 their own wishes, but in such matter as the Element they are 
 in is capable of, which is this crude and vaporous Aire ; whence 
 their food must be very dilute and flashie, and rather a mockery 
 than any solid satisfaction and pleasure. 
 
 But those Superiour Daemons, which inhabit that part of the 
 Aire that no storm nor tempest can reach, need be put to no such 
 shifts, though they may be as able in them as the other. For in 
 the tranquillity of those upper Eegions, that Promus-Gondus of the 
 Universe, the Spirit of Nature, may silently send forth whole Gardens 
 and Orchards of most delectable fruits and flowers of an equilibri- 
 ous ponderosity to the parts of the Aire they grow in, to whose 
 shape and colours the transparency of these Plants may adde 
 a particular lustre, as we see it is in precious stones. And the 
 Ghymists are never quiet till the heat of their Fancy have calcined 
 and vitrified the Earth into a crystalline pellucidity, conceiting 
 that it will then be a very fine thing indeed, and all that then^ 
 
 ^ More, Immortality of the Soul, iii. 19. 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 99 
 
 grows out of it : which desirable spectacle they may haply enjoy 
 in a more perfect manner whenever they are admitted into those 
 higher Regions of the Aire. For the very Soile then under them 
 shall be transparent, in which they may trace the very Roots of 
 the Trees of this Superiour Paradise with their eyes, and if it may 
 not offend them, see this opake Earth through it, bounding their 
 sight with such a white faint splendour as is discovered in the 
 Moon, with that difference of brightness that will arise from the 
 distinction of Land and Water; and if they will recreate their 
 palats, may taste of such Fruits as whose natural juice will vie 
 with their noblest Extractions and Quintessences. For such cer- 
 tainly will they there find the blood of the Grape, the rubie- 
 coloured Cherries, and Nectarines. 
 
 And if, for the compleating of the pleasantness of these habi- 
 tations, that they may look less like a silent and dead solitude, they 
 meet with Birds and Beasts of curious shapes and colours, the single 
 accents of whose voices are very grateful to the Ear, and the vary- 
 ing of their notes perfect musical harmony ; they would doe very 
 kindly to bring us word back of the certainty of these things, and 
 make this more than a Philosophical Conjecture. 
 
 But that there may be Pood and Feasting in those higher 
 Aereal Regions, is less doubted by the Platonists; which makes 
 Maximus Tyrius call the Soul, when she has left the body, θρψμα 
 αίθψίον ; and the above-cited Oracle of Apollo describes the Felicity 
 of that Chorus of immortal Lovers he mentions there, from feasting 
 together with the blessed Genii — 
 
 o(rots Keap iv θαΧί7](Τίν 
 alkv ίνφροσνν^αην tatVerat. 
 
 So that the Nectar and Ambrosia of the Poets may not be a mere 
 fable. For the Spirit of Nature^ which is the immediate Instru- 
 ment of God, may enrich the fruits of these Aereal Paradises with 
 such liquors, as being received into the bodies of these purer 
 Daemons, and diffusing it self through their Vehicles, may cause 
 such grateful motions analogical to our last, and excite such a 
 more than ordinary quickness in their minds, and benign chearful- 
 ness, that it may far transcend the most delicate Refection that 
 the greatest Epicures could ever invent upon Earth ; and that 
 without all satiety, burdensomeness, it filling them with nothing 
 but Divine Love, Joy, and Devotion.^ 
 
 It is very difficult to ί disentangle the motives which go 
 to the production of a passage like this. We should say 
 
 1 More's Immortality of the Soul, iii. 9, pp. 183, 184, ed. 1662. The 
 indebtedness of More's "Myth" to the Platonic, and Stoic mythology of 
 τά irepl γην inhabited by δαίμφν€% and human souls, is obvious. For further 
 reference to that mythology see infra, pp. 437 ff. 
 
100 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 without hesitation that the writer wished to adorn his 
 discourse with a myth, if we did not know how uncritical 
 his " science " was, and how credulous he was in accepting, as 
 literally true, things quite as visionary as those here described. 
 In his Antidote against Atheism he shows how thoroughly he 
 believes current stories about the doings of witches and ghosts 
 (see especially Book iii. chap. vii. of that work, for the story of 
 Anne Bodenham, a witch, who suffered at Salisbury in 1653), 
 and how valuable he holds these stories to be as evidence for 
 the immortality of the Soul; indeed, in the Preface to his 
 Fhilosophickal Foems he goes the length of expressing the 
 wish that stories of witchcraft and apparitions " were publicly 
 recorded in every parish," for " that course continued would 
 prove one of the best antidotes against that earthly and cold 
 disease of Sadducisme and Atheisme which may easily grow 
 upon us, if not prevented, to the hazard of all Eeligion and 
 the best kinds of Philosophy." It is to be noted, however, 
 that Cudworth and Smith are not so credulous as More. 
 Cud worth may be said to be a cautious believer in apparitions, 
 and dwells on the Scripture evidence for demoniacal possession, 
 and not, like More, on that afforded by modern stories ; ^ 
 while Smith, in a sermon preached on an occasion when 
 credulity seemed to be required,^ expresses himself in a 
 manner which makes one feel that he was in advance of 
 his age. 
 
 There is just one general remark I should like to make 
 in taking leave of More for the present: — That facility of 
 scientific explanation is apt to make men indifferent about 
 the substantiation of the facts, as facts. The facility of 
 scientific explanation afforded by the hypothesis of " plastick 
 power" doubtless made it more easy for More and other 
 Cambridge Platonists to accept as sufficient the evidence 
 forthcoming for the actual appearance of ghosts and Daemons. 
 Facility of scientific explanation is a danger which we have to 
 be on our guard against at the present day too. 
 
 [The true object of the Phaedo Myth is, indeed, moral and^ 
 
 ^ Intellectual System, vol. ii. p. 640 (ed. Mosheim). 
 
 2 Discourse 10, 0/ a Christian's Conflicts with and Conquests over Satan, 
 "delivered in publick at Huntingdon, where one of Queen's College, in e very- 
 year on March 25, preached a Sermon against Witchcraft, Diabolical Contracts, 
 etc." ; see Worthington's Preface to Smith's Select Discourses. 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 101 
 
 religious, not in any way scientific — its true object is to give 
 expression to man's sense of responsibility, which it does in^v ^ 
 the form of a vivid history, or spectacle, of the connected life- A\v)> 
 stages of an immortal personality^ This moral and religious ^ ^O 
 object, however, is served best, if the history or spectacle, v"^ ^\i 
 though carefully presented as a creation of fancy, is not made C^ .»i 
 too fantastical, but is kept at least consistent with " modern 
 science." -^ It is of the greatest importance that the student 
 of the philosophy of Plato's Myths should learn to appreciate 
 the terms of this alliance between Myth and Science ; ^ and I 
 do not know how the lesson can be better learnt than from 
 parallel study of Dante's Divina Commedia, in which all the 
 science — moral and physical — of the age is used to give 
 verisimilitude to the great μνθος of medieval Christianity. 
 Fortunately, no better instances of the art with which Dante 
 presses Science into the service of Myth could be found than 
 in his treatment of a subject which has special interest for 
 us here, in connection with the geography and geology of the 
 Fhaedo Myth. This brings me to the second head of obser- 
 vations which I have to offer on the Fhaedo Myth. 
 
 II 
 
 In this section I wish to draw attention to the parallel 
 between Plato's geography of Tartarus and the True Surface 
 of the Earth, and Dante's geography of Hell and the Mount 
 of Purgatory with the Earthly Paradise on its summit. 
 
 The parallel is close. On the one hand, the Fhaedo Myth 
 and the Divina Commedia stand entirely alone, so far as 
 I know, among Eschatological Myths in making Tartarus or 
 Hell a chasm bored right through the globe of the Earth 
 (ΒίαμτΓβρβς τβτρημβνον Bl ο\ης τή<ί γ^9, Fhaedo, 1 11 Ε ; Inferno y 
 xxxiv. sub fin.), with two antipodally placed openings. On 
 the other hand, while the Fhaedo Myth stands alone among 
 Plato's Eschatological Myths in describing a lofty terrestrial 
 region raised, above the elements of water and air, up into the 
 
 ^ Aristotle's canon applies — ττροαφεΐσθαί re Set αδύνατα elK&ra μάλλον ή 
 δυνατά, απίθανα. — Poet. 1460 a 30. 
 
 2 In this connection the reader should turn to Prof. Dill's illuminating 
 remarks on the mixture of science with devotional allegory and myth in the 
 Commentary of Macrobius or» Cicero's Dream of Scipio : Roman Society in the 
 Last Century of the Western Empire, Book i. ch. iv. pp. 88-90, ed. 1. 
 
102 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 element of fire or aether, Dante also, in agreement with a 
 common medieval belief, places the Earthly Paradise on the 
 top of a mountain — his own Mount of Purgatory — which 
 rises up into the element of fire. 
 
 The "Earthly Paradise" of the Phaedo Myth probably 
 owes a good deal to the Homeric Olympus ; and the Earthly 
 Paradise of medieval belief and of the JDivina Commedia may 
 have derived at least its altitude from the same source. But 
 the description of Tartarus as bored right through the Earth, 
 unique in Greek mythology, in no way countenanced by Virgil, 
 and yet reappearing in the Inferno, which is so largely modelled 
 on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid — this is surely a strange 
 coincidence. The Timaeus (in the version of Chalcidius) was, 
 it would appear, the only work of Plato which Dante knew 
 directly.^ There is no evidence whatever — unless this coin- 
 cidence be regarded as evidence — that he was acquainted with 
 the Latin version of the Fhaedo which was made in the 
 twelfth century.^ It is possible, however, but I hardly think 
 likely, that the passage in the Meteor ologica (ii. 2, 355 b, 
 32 ff.), in which the Phaedo description of Tartarus is referred 
 to, may have given Dante the idea of an antipodal exit from 
 Hell ; although it is to be noted that Aristotle, in criticising 
 the hydrostatics of the Phaedo Myth, curiously enough omits 
 to quote, or paraphrase, Plato's emphatic Βίαμττβρβς τβτρημενον ; 
 and S. Thomas does not make good the omission in his com- 
 mentary on the Aristotelian passage. I do not think that 
 any one reading the Aristotelian passage, without having read 
 the Phaedo, would easily gather that the Tartarus of tho 
 Phaedo is bored right through the Earth. Aristotle is 
 concerned to show that the theory of a central αΙώρα, or 
 oscillation, gives a wrong explanation of the origin of seas 
 and rivers ; and, more suo, he is careless in his description of 
 the theory to which he objects. Although the hydrostatics 
 of the Quaestio de Aqua et Terra^ agree in the main with 
 
 ^ See Moore's Studies in Dante, first series, p. 156, and Tojnbee's^J^iwie 
 Dictionary, s.v. "Platone." ^ 
 
 '^ See Rashdall's Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, i. 37, ii. 744, 
 and Immisch, Philoloyische Studien zu Plato, pp. 33, 34. Henrieus Aristippus 
 (Archdeacon of Catania) translated the Phaedo and Meno in 1156. There is a 
 MS. of his translation in Corpus Christi College, Oxford (243), written in 
 1423 ; see Coxe, ii. 100. 
 
 ' With regard to the authenticity of this treatise see Moore's Studies in 
 Dante, second series, pp. 303 if. 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 103 
 
 those of the Meteor ologica, the Inferno is not influenced 
 by the Meteor ologica. The Inferno follows the traditional 
 mythology in supposing subterranean rivers, and, indeed, 
 agrees with the account of these rivers given in the Fhaedo, 
 to the extent, at least, of regarding them as forming a single 
 system of waters connected somehow with waters on the 
 surface of the Earth. Dante may have been helped to this 
 view by Brunetto Latini, who speaks, very much in the same 
 way as Plato does, of waters circulating in channels through 
 the Earth, like blood through the veins of the body, and 
 coming out in springs.^ But mark how the Poet uses these 
 mere hydrostatics — how his genius transforms the physical 
 relation between the living world and Tartarus into a moral 
 relation ! It is the tears of this world that flow in the rivers 
 of Dante's Hell.^ 
 
 Let me close this passage on Plato's Tartarus and Dante's 
 Hell with the remark that an antipodal exit from Hell, near 
 the Mount of Purgatory, is almost necessary to the movement 
 of the Commedia. If such an exit — whether derived directly 
 or indirectly from the Fhaedo, or obtained from some other 
 source — did not already exist among Dante's mythological 
 data, he would practically have been obliged to invent it, and 
 offer some explanation of it, such as that which he actually 
 offers — the Fall of Lucifer (Inf. xxxiv.). 
 
 Now to pass on to the parallel between Plato's " True 
 Surface of the Earth " and Dante's Earthly Paradise on the 
 top of the Mount of Purgatory : — Dante's Mount of Purga- 
 tory is definitely a part of this Earth. It is an island, 
 antipodal to Jerusalem, in the middle of the ocean which 
 covers the southern hemisphere. This island rises up, in a 
 series of circular terraces, into one lofty height on which is 
 situated the Earthly Paradise, — where our first parents 
 were created, — where the souls which have been purified by 
 
 1 See Schmidt, iiber Dantes Stellung in der GescMchte der Kosmographie, 
 I. Teil, de Aqua et Terra (1876), p. 7. 
 
 2 Inferno, xiv. Dante probably profited by the crude fancy of predecessors 
 in the matter of the contents of the infernal rivers ; see Gary on Inf. xii. It 
 is perhaps worth noticing here that Dante's River of Blood {Inf. xii.) has its 
 parallel in the Scottish ballad of Thomas the Rhymer :— 
 
 It was mirk mirk night and there was nae stem-light, 
 And tbey waded through red bluid to the knee ; 
 For a' the bluid that's shed on earth 
 Rins through the springs o' that countrie (i.e. Elf-land). 
 
104 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 penance during their ascent of the Mount are gathered 
 together, before they drink the waters of Lethe and Εηηοέ, 
 the twin streams of this Paradise, and are translated into the 
 Heavenly Paradise. That Purgatory is a real place, on the 
 surface of this globe, which an adventurous voyager from our 
 hemisphere might possibly reach νηί μβΧαίντ), is suggested 
 with consummate art in the hiferno, Canto xxvi., where 
 Ulysses describes his last voyage — how, with Ceuta on his 
 left and Seville on his right, he sailed out through the Straits, 
 and south over the ocean for five months, till the stars of the 
 northern hemisphere sank beneath the horizon, and new stars 
 appeared in the sky, and he sighted 
 
 A Mountain dim, loftiest, methouglit, 
 Of all I e'er beheld i— 
 
 and then the storm burst which overwhelmed him. 
 
 Dante's Mount of Purgatory — for that was the land 
 which Ulysses sighted — is identical with the lofty mountain 
 on the top of which medieval belief placed the Earthly Para- 
 dise ; but Dante apparently drew entirely on his own im- 
 agination when he localised Purgatory on its slopes.^ This 
 Mountain of the Earthly Paradise rises, according to the 
 medieval belief, as high as the Lunar Sphere ^ — i.e. its upper 
 parts are above the air, in the aether or fire, like Plato's True 
 Surface of the Earth. Hence, as S. Thomas explains, the 
 Earthly Paradise was not reached by the flood.* S. Thomas 
 further remarks that Enoch and Elias are said to be now 
 in it ; also, that it is said to be sub aequinoctiali circulo ; but 
 he will not vouch for its exact position, only expressing his 
 belief that it must be in a " temperate clime." ^ The Arabians, 
 whose geographical treatises, and epitomes of the Greek 
 geographers, Dante knew in Latin versions,^ spoke of a great 
 
 ^ Gary's translation. 
 
 2 See Scartazzini {Companion to Dante, Butler's Transl. p. 419). "Purga- 
 tory, so far as form and position go, is a creation quite of the poet's own." It 
 may, I think, have relationship to the " steep hill of virtue " whicOhe Stoics 
 climbed ; see Lucian, Vera Hist. ii. 18 — no Stoics were to be seen in the For- 
 tunate Island, because they were climbing this liill : των δέ Στωικών ovSds 
 ναρην ^L yap iX^yovTO ανάβαιναν τί>ν r^s dper^s &ρΘων λόφον. 
 
 2 See S. Thom. A qui. Sumina, i. 102, 2. 
 
 ** Of. Schmidt, Cosrnographie des Dante, p. 23. 
 
 ^ Sumina, i. 102, 2. 
 
 β See Lelewel, Histoire de la Goographie, i. Ixxxv., and Toynbee's Dante 
 Dictionary, arts. " Alfergano" and " Tolommeo^" 
 
THE ΡΗΛΕΌΟ MYTH 106 
 
 mountain in the far south. It is called Mons Caldicus by 
 Albertus/ and Mons Malcus by Eoger Bacon, who places it in 
 India.^ The view that this mountain, identified by the 
 Christian Schoolmen with the seat of the Earthly Paradise, 
 is an island antipodal to Jerusalem in the middle of the 
 Southern Ocean (Furg. iv. 70), was due entirely, it would 
 seem,^ to Dante's own " scientific imagination " or " mythopoeic 
 faculty." According to the doctrine of Orosius, generally 
 accepted in Dante's time, there is no land at all in the 
 southern hemisphere. If there were land, its inhabitants 
 would be cut off from those of the orhis notus — the unity and 
 continuity of the human race, postulated by the command, 
 " Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every 
 creature," would not exist. The ideal of one Church and one 
 Empire (and one Aristotelian Philosophy, as Dante adds in 
 the Convivio, iv. 6) requires the geographical condition of one 
 continuous οίκονμίνη} Dante's antipodal island, however, 
 being peopled only by the souls of the departed, is in no way 
 inconsistent with the teleological geography of Orosius — 
 indeed, is made, with consummate art, to corroborate it ; for 
 the cause which produced the solitary island of Purgatory in 
 
 1 Meteor, ii. 2. 7. Cf. Schmidt, Cosm. d. Dante, p. 23. 
 
 2 Op. Maj. pp. 192, 195, ed. princ. Jebb, London. 
 
 ^ See Scartazzini's Companion to Dante, p. 419, Butler's Eng. Transl. It is, 
 however, an island in the Exeter Book (an Anthology of Anglo-Saxon Poetry 
 given to the Library of Exeter Cathedral by Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter, 
 1050-1071): see Exeter Book, edited by Israel Gollancz for the Early English 
 Text Society, 1895, poem on the "Phoenix," pp. 200 ff.: "The Earthly Paradise 
 is in eastern parts ... it is all plain ... is an island. . . . There the door of 
 Heaven's Realm is oft-times opened. . . . It is green and flowery. There is no 
 rain there, nor snow nor frost nor fire. It is neither too hot nor too cold. The 
 plain (which is quite smooth) is higher than any mountain by 12 fathom 
 measures. It escaped the flood. ... It shall abide perennially blooming till 
 the Day of Judgment. Water falls not there, but rises from the turf in the 
 midst of the forest each month of the year, and irrigates the grove [we are 
 reminded of Dante's Lethe and Eunoe]. The beautiful grove is inhabited by 
 the Phoenix " — which the Poet then goes on to describe. 
 
 It ought to be mentioned that Claudian {Idyll, i. \. Phoenix) makes "the 
 Earthly Paradise " an island : — 
 
 Oceani summo circumfluus aequore lucus 
 
 Trans Indos Eur um que viret. . . . 
 
 Mr. Toynbee, however, thinks it doubtful whether Dante had any acquaintance 
 with Claudian (see Dante Diet. art. " Claudianus "). Benvenuto da Imola, in his 
 Commentary on the Divina Commedia, quotes Claudian several times, describing 
 him, erroneously, as a Florentine ; see Mr. Toynbee's Index of Authors quoted by 
 Beiw. da Imola in his Commentary on the D. C. (Annual Report of the Dante 
 Society, Cambridge, Mass., 1901). 
 
 4 Orosius, Hist. adv. paganos^i. 2, §§ 87-89 ^ vi. 22, § 1 ; vii. 1 ; vii. 3, 4 ; and 
 cf. Moore's Studies in Dante, first series, pp. 279 if. 
 
106 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 the southern hemisphere, simultaneously produced the one 
 οικουμένη of the northern hemisphere. Lucifer fell on the 
 southern hemisphere {Inf. xxxiv.), and the shock of his fall 
 submerged the land which originally existed there, and caused 
 an equivalent amount of land in the northern hemisphere 
 to bulge up above the sea ; the Mount of Purgatory, the only 
 land now in the southern hemisphere, having been formed 
 by the material extruded, as Lucifer, with the force of his fall, 
 bored a passage down to the centre of the Earth. Thus does 
 Dante give verisimilitude to his mythology of " the abhorred 
 worm that boreth through the world" {Inf. xxxiv. 108), by 
 making it explain a physical fact, or what the science of his 
 day accepted as a fact ; and, at the same time, by means of 
 the explanation, he brings the fact — so important for the 
 doctrine of one Church and one Empire — into clear con- 
 nection with a vast system of belief already accepted. When 
 the rebel angels — about a tenth part of the original number 
 created — were lost to Heaven, the human race was created 
 to make good the loss.^ The descent of the Prince of these 
 rebel angels produced, at one blow, Hell, and Purgatory, and 
 the One Continent which is the condition of the ecclesiastical 
 and civil unity of the human race. All hangs together clearly. 
 " Science " recommends Myth, and Myth " Science," in one 
 consistent whole. 
 
 Again, in Purg. xxviii., the distribution of plants in 
 our hemisphere, from a common centre of creation, is explained 
 in such a way as to make the existence of an Earthly Para- 
 dise appear the only hypothesis consistent with " science." 
 The wind which Dante notices with wonder among the trees 
 of the Earthly Paradise is caused, he is told, by the rotation, 
 from east to west, of the primum mobile, or crystalline sphere 
 
 ^ See Convivio, ii. 6 : "Dico che di tutti questi Ordini si perderono alquanti 
 tosto che furono creati, forse in numero della decima parte ; alia quale restaurare 
 fu Γ umana natura poi creata. So also Spenser {An Hymn of Heavenly Love) : — 
 
 But that eternal Fount of Love and Grace, 
 Still showing forth his goodness unto all. 
 Now seeing left a waste and empty place 
 In his wide Palace, through those Angels' Fall, 
 Cast to supply the same, and to enstall 
 
 A new unknowen Colonic therein. 
 
 Whose Root from Earth's base Ground-work should begin. 
 
 In this Hymn the whole drama worked out by Milton in Paradise Lost and 
 Paradise Regained is indicated in outline. 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 107 
 
 — the ninth sphere counted from that of the moon. The 
 rotation of the primum mobile carries round with it the pure 
 air or aether in which the Earthly Paradise is bathed ; and 
 this aether is impregnated with the seeds of the trees of the 
 Earthly Paradise, and carries them round to our hemisphere, 
 where they germinate according as they find soils and climates 
 suitable to their various virtues. Here we have a " Myth," 
 in which Faith, Fancy, and Science are blended in the true 
 Platonic manner. 
 
 The close parallel between Plato's " True Surface of the 
 Earth " and Dante's Earthly Paradise has been made evident, 
 I trust, by what I have said about the latter. Plato's " True 
 Surface of the Earth " is a real place in this world, physically 
 connected with the region which we inhabit. It is distin- 
 guished from our region essentially by its altitude. With its 
 foundation, like that of Dante's Island of Purgatory, bathed 
 in the crass elements of water and air, it rises up into the 
 region occupied by the element of fire or aether — a region 
 which, we must remember, belonged as definitely to the 
 domain of " science " for Plato and Dante as the regions of 
 water and air, of which men have direct experience. Given 
 a sufficient altitude, aether will take the place of air, and 
 beneath aether, air will be as water. This is " scientifically " 
 true. It is also in accordance with " science " to believe that 
 the inhabitants of the aethereal altitudes live longer, more 
 vigorously, and more happily, than we, poor frogs, do, down 
 in the mists beside the waters of our hollow. A place has 
 been found — or as good as found — by "science," where the 
 souls of the virtuous may live in the enjoyment of the rewards 
 of their virtue, and in preparation for an even more blessed 
 existence elsewhere. There can be no doubt, I think, that 
 the lofty terrestrial Paradise of the Fhaedo Myth answers to 
 the " Islands of the Blessed " in the Gorgias Myth, to the τα 
 irepl yrjv of the Phaedrus Myth,^ and to the "heaven" or 
 ουρανός of the Myth of Er, from which the souls of the 
 virtuous, who have not yet completed their purgatorial course, 
 return, after a thousand years' sojourn, to the " meadow," in 
 order to journey thence to the plain of Lethe, and drink the 
 
 ^ Phaedrus, 257 A ; and cfm 248 b-249 a, where τούραροΰ rtj tottoj seems to 
 answer to τα rrepl γην, as contrasted with τά ύττό 7^s in 257 A. 
 
108 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 [water of the river, and be born again in terrestrial bodies. 
 The " Islands of the Blessed " were doubtless pictured by 
 Hesiod and Pindar as islands in the ordinary sense, sur- 
 rounded by water, somewhere out in the Western Ocean ; ^ 
 Plato, in the Phaedo, is singular in making them aerial, not 
 oceanic. With an art that is charming, he not only gives 
 direct " scientific " reasons for believing in the existence of his 
 aethereal altitudes of the Earth's surface (the configuration of 
 the Earth in its envelopes of air and aether — deep hollows of 
 its surface being compensated for by lofty heights — naturally 
 produces such blessed altitudes), but he also knows how to 
 add the authority of the poets to the reasons of " science," 
 by making his description of these altitudes recall, not only 
 the Homeric Olympus,^ but the Islands of the Blessed as 
 described by Hesiod and Pindar. 
 
 The original conception, in Greek as in Celtic ^ mythology, 
 of Islands of the Blessed was that of an Elysium or Paradise, 
 somewhere on the surface of the Earth, inhabited by gods, in 
 which also certain elect heroes, who have been translated 
 thither, enjoy in the flesh eternal felicity. This is the con- 
 ception which meets us in Homer,^ Hesiod, Pindar, and the 
 ^Hymn to Harmodius and Aristogeiton. But in course of 
 [time this original conception was modified in the interest of 
 morality and religion, especially the religion of the Orphic 
 cult, and the Islands of the Blessed came to be regarded as 
 the abode of the souls of the virtuous generally. This view 
 is acquiesced in in the Gorgias, where Tartarus indeed appears as 
 a Purgatory or place of temporary sojourn for the majority of 
 the souls which go thither after judgment ; but we are left to 
 suppose that virtuous souls which go at once after judgment 
 to the Islands of the Blessed remain there thenceforth for 
 
 1 Hesiod, 0. et D. 167 :— 
 
 rots bk δίχ ανθρώπων βίοτον καΐ ijde' όττάσσαζ 
 
 Ζβύί Κρονίδψ κατένασσ€ ιτατηρ ^s ιτείρατα Ύαίηί. 
 
 καΐ τοί μέν ναίονσιν άκήδεα θνμόν ^χοντ€$ 
 
 iv μακάρων νησοισι τταρ' 'ί}κ€ανόν βαθυδίνην, 
 
 δλβίΟί TJpwes, τοΐσιν μελκηδέα καρπόν 
 
 rpU έτεοί θάΧλοντα φέρει ζείδωροι άρονρα. 
 
 ^ See Thiemann, die Platonische Eschatologie in ihrer genetischen Entwickeluna 
 (1892), p. 20. 
 
 3 See Myer and Nutt's Voyage of Bran, i. 329. 
 ^ See Rohde, Psyche, i. 69. 
 
THE ΡΗΛΕΌΟ MYTH 109 
 
 ever. In the Fhaedo, however, the notion of progressive 
 purification dominates the view taken of the Islands or 
 " aethereal altitudes," as well as of Tartarus. For " Philo- 
 sophers " mansions even fairer than the aethereal altitudes 
 are indicated as the final abode. We are to think, perhaps, 
 of the natal stars of the Timaeus. Finally, in the Bepublic, 
 where^ the notion of re-incarnation, kept in the background in 
 the Gorgias and the Fhaedo} is so prominent, the region to 
 which virtuous souls go after judgment is, at any rate for 
 many of them, only a place of temporary sojourn. They 
 return from it, as other souls return from Tartarus, to be 
 born again in the flesh. This view of Elysium as a place of 
 pleasant sojourn from which souls, virtuous on the whole, but 
 not yet completely purified, pass to the river of Lethe, and 
 thence, after drinking of its water, proceed to enter into new 
 terrestrial bodies, is that which we find in the Sixth Book of 
 the Aeneid. The view of Elysium represented in the Frogs 
 and the Axiochus, on the other hand, is rather that of a final 
 abode of bliss, into which ceremonial observances secure a 
 speedy entrance, immediately after death, to the soul of the 
 μύστης. With this substitution of the 02)us ojperatum for the 
 personal struggle after purification, prolonged through this 
 life and perhaps many other lives, Plato has no sympathy. The 
 view of Elysium or ουρανός as still a place of probation he 
 would have us accept as that which, on the whole, will guide 
 us best in the conduct of our earthly life. 
 
 Taking, then, the '' Islands of the Blessed " in the Gorgias 
 Myth, the ουρανός in the Myth of Er, and the " True Surface 
 of the Earth " in the Fhaedo Myth, as names for the same 
 region, we may perhaps venture to harmonise the accounts 
 given of it in the three Myths, by saying that the souls of 
 the virtuous, after judgment, go thither — some of them to 
 sojourn for ever {Gorgias), some of them for a thousand years, 
 till they return again to enter into the flesh {Bep.), and a few 
 of them — Philosophers {Fhaedo), till such time as they have 
 been thoroughly purified, and are translated to still fairer 
 mansions {οίκησβις ere τούτων καΧλίους, Fhaedo, 114 c) in 
 the true Heaven, as the purified are taken up from Dante's 
 Earthly Paradise into the Heavenly Paradise. 
 
 1 In the Fhaedo Myth; it appears in the Dialogue, 81 E-82 b. 
 
110 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 It is certainly important to note that the place to which 
 the souls of the virtuous go in the three Platonic Myths — 
 variously called " Islands of the Blessed," " True Surface of the 
 Earth," and ουρανός, " Heaven " — is, for some of these souls 
 at least, a temporary abode, a stage in their purgatorial course, 
 just as Tartarus is a Purgatory for all except the utterly 
 incorrigible. 
 
 In what part of the world are the Platonic " Islands of 
 the Blessed " or " Altitudes of the True Surface of the Earth " ? 
 The Phaedo Myth does not say ; but we are allowed to sup- 
 pose that they are far away from our οικουμένη, in another 
 part of the world. Perhaps Plato, in writing the Phaedo 
 Myth, did not even imagine a definite locality for them. We 
 are bound to allow for this possibility, but, in doing so, we 
 need not scruple to consider some evidence which may be 
 thought to point to the conclusion that he did localise them 
 — and that, in the antipodes, where Dante's Mount of Purgatory 
 stands. The Axiochus, a pseudo-Platonic Dialogue,-^ identifies 
 the world of the departed definitely with the antipodal hemi- 
 sphere. The author of the Axiochus probably thought that 
 the identification was in accordance with the geography and 
 cosmography of Plato ; at any rate, those who accepted the 
 piece as written by Plato must have thought so. We may 
 safely go the length of saying that the identification would 
 not be impossible for Plato, so far as his view of the position 
 and shape of the Earth is concerned. He holds, with the 
 writer of the Axiochus, that the Earth is a sphere in the centre 
 of the Cosmos. The passage in the Axiochus is as follows 
 (371a ff.) : την υττό^^ευον οίκησιν, iv fj βασίλεια ΐΙΧούτωνος, 
 ουχ ηττω τήζ του Αώς αΰΧης, ατ€ της μεν ^ής Ιγούσης τα 
 μέσα του κόσμου, του he ΊτοΧου οντος σφαιρΟΈΐΒοΰς ' ου το 
 μεν έτερον ήμισφαίριον θεοί ελα'χρν ουράνιοι, το δε έτερον οι 
 
 * See Thiemann, Plat. Eschat. p. 26, and Rohde, Psyche, i. 314 ; ii. 247, n. 1, 
 and 422. Rohde says that it can hardly be earlier than the third century B.C. 
 It is a παραμνθητίκό$ Xoyos containing expressions which point to the direct in- 
 fluence of Orphic teaching and practice. Axiochus is described (371 d) as 
 Ύβννητψ των θβών — i.e. as μ€μνημένο5, and therefore συγγεί/η? των θεών κατά, ttjv 
 ΊΓοίησιν — by adoption, with which μύησις was commonly identified. For 
 'γ€νούστηί in Philebus, 30 d (a passage on which, I think, Plut. de gen. Soc. 22 — 
 where μονά^ is said to be prior to voOs— throws light), Ύβννήτηί, I think, ought 
 to be read ; but see R. G. Bury's note ad loc. Apelt {zu Platons Philebus in 
 Rhein. Mus. vol. 55, 1. p. 13, 1900) suggests that ^ζνούστψ means "parent of 
 vovs" by a punning derivation ! 
 
THE PHAEDO MYTH 111 
 
 vTrivepOev — i.e. the " Palace of Pluto," in addition to its sub- 
 terranean, or properly " infernal " parts, includes the whole 
 antipodal hemisphere of the Earth, with its sky lighted by 
 the sun, when it is night in our hemisphere, — τοΐσο 'λάμττβι 
 μεν μ€νο<ζ άβΧίου ταν evOdBe νύκτα κάτω (Pindar, /ra^m. 129), 
 — Αητο^γενάζ, συ δε τταΐΒας iv ηρώβσσί φυΧάσσονς, βνσββέων 
 alel χωρον βττερχόμβνος (Kaibel, ep. lap. 228 b 7, 8).•^ To 
 this " under world " the dead go to be judged. Some are 
 sent into the subterranean parts, while others enjoy the light 
 of day, in a land of flowers and streams, apparently still in 
 the hemisphere of ol vTrevepOev θεοί — of the antipodal gods, 
 as we may call them. Among these blessed ones it is dis- 
 tinctly stated that the " initiated " take precedence — ενταύθα 
 τοις μεμνημενοίς εστί τίς ττροεΒρία, 371 D. 
 
 Now, we may safely say that there is nothing in the 
 Platonic doctrine of the shape and position of the Earth 
 inconsistent with this " under world " of the Axiochus. But 
 can we say more ? I venture to mention two points : — First, 
 Plato's judgment-seat in the Myth of Er, between the open- 
 ings of " Heaven " and Tartarus, is above ground, and so is 
 the region across which the pilgrims travel towards the pillar 
 of light ; and so (as I believe in all Greek accounts) is the 
 river of Lethe.^ It is from the plain of Lethe, on the surface 
 of the Earth, that the souls shoot up (άνω, Rep. 621 b) to 
 be born again in terrestrial bodies — that is, I venture to χ 
 suggest, up from the lower, antipodal hemisphere to our hemi- 
 sphere. Secondly, the hollow or cave of Tartarus extends 
 right through the globe of the Earth, as we have seen — 
 Βίαμττερες τετρημενον δί,' οΧης της γης {Fhaedo, 111 ε) — i.e. 
 has an opening in the lower hemisphere as well as in this. 
 Without going the length of supposing that Plato's unseen 
 world is mapped out with the definiteness of Dante's, we may 
 take it that Plato, with his poet's faculty of visualisation, 
 must have formed a clear mental picture of the opening of 
 Tartarus in the " lower " or antipodal hemisphere, and of the 
 country into which one comes on issuing from it. The anti- 
 
 ^ Quoted by Rohde, Psyche, ii. 210, n. 1. 
 
 2 See Thiemann, Plat. Esch. p. 18. I shall return to this subject in my 
 observations on the Myth of Er. Virgil's Lethe is of uncertain position ; but 
 Dante follows the universal Qfeek tradition in making Lethe a river of the 
 surface of the Earth. 
 
112 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 podal opening was not, we may assume, imagined by Plato in 
 vain. Those souls which, after being judged (whether above 
 or under ground does not appear in the Phaedo — but probably 
 underground), go, not to the Islands of the Blessed, but down 
 the river Acheron to the Acherusian Lake (which is certainly 
 subterranean), have entered the infernal regions, we may 
 fairly suppose, by the opening in our hemisphere, and will 
 come out, after their penance, by the other — the antipodal — 
 I opening, and will start thence on their journey — always above 
 ground — to the river of Lethe. That Plato actually thought 
 of the souls as going into Tartarus, and coming out of it, by 
 distinct openings, we know from the Myth of Er. But while 
 the entrance and exit are antipodally placed in the Phaedo 
 Myth, which takes careful account of cosmographical and 
 geological conditions, in the Myth of Er the purpose of 
 pictorial composition is served by placing them side by side, 
 \ opposite the entrance and exit of " Heaven " ; the " Meadow," 
 / at once the place of judgment and the starting-place for the 
 plain of Lethe, lying between Tartarus and "Heaven." It 
 would be easy to give examples, from Greek vase-painting, of 
 similar compression in pictorial composition. I call attention 
 to this discrepancy between the Phaedo Myth and the Myth 
 of Er, to show how absurd it would be to attempt to con- 
 struct one topographical scheme for Plato's Eschatological 
 Myths, as rigid as the one scheme to which Dante is so faith- 
 ful in the Divina Commedia. What I venture to suggest, 
 however, is that, in the Phaedo Myth, Plato is possibly — or 
 shall I say " probably " ? — thinking of the world of the de- 
 parted, so far as it is not subterranean, or celestial, as some- 
 where in the other hemisphere of the terrestrial globe, — 
 somewhere, but as in a dream, in which inconsistencies are 
 
 accepted a§ natural; for the "True Surface of the Earth," 
 
 though somewhere in the antipodal hemisphere, beneath us, 
 is yet a region above us, whence gems have found their way 
 down to our hollow ! 
 
 I have dwelt on the parallel between the geography of the 
 Phaedo Myth and that of the Divina Commedia with the 
 view, not of clearing up particular difficulties in mythological 
 geography, but of suggesting a method by which the function 
 of Myth in the Platonic philosophy may be better understood 
 
THE FHAEBO MYTH 113 
 
 the method of sealing the impression made on us by the 
 
 Myth of one great master by study of the Myth of another 
 great master with whom we may happen to be in closer 
 sympathy. The service which Myth, and poetical treatment 
 generally, can render to the faith on which conduct and science 
 ultimately rest is, I think, more easily and finely appreciated 
 by us in Dante than in Plato ; for we live, though in late days, 
 in the same Christian epoch with the medieval poet. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Let me close these observations on the Phaedo Myth by 
 calling attention to what Socrates says at the end of the 
 narrative (114 d), — that, while it would not be sensible to 
 maintain that all about the Soul and the next world contained 
 in the Myth is absolutely true, yet, since the Soul is plainly 
 immortal, one ought to hazard the pious belief that, if not 
 absolutely true, this Myth, or some other like it, is not far 
 from being true, and " sing it over oneself " as if it were an 
 enchanter's song : — το μεν ουν ταύτα ^ασγ^υρίσασθαί όντως 
 €'χ^6ΐ,ν, ως iyo) ΒίβΧηΧυθα, ου TTpeiret, νουν β'χοντυ άνΒρί' οτι 
 μεντοο ή ταϋτ εστίν ή τοιαυτ άττα ττερί τας ^^νχας ημών 
 καϊ τας οίκησευς, εττείττερ άθάνατόν 'γε ή "^υχτ] φαίνεται οΰσα, 
 τούτο καΐ Ίτρέττειν μου Βοκεΐ καϊ άξίον κινδύνευσαν οίομενω 
 οΰτως ε'χειν καΧος yap 6 κίνΒυνος' καϊ 'χ^ρη τα τοιαύτα ώσττερ 
 εττάΒειν εαυτω, Βώ Βη εγωγβ καϊ ττάλαι μηκύνω τον μύθον. 
 The distinction between Dogma and Myth is carefully insisted 
 on here, and also the practical value of Myth as an expression 
 of moral and religious feeling. Myth, it is suggested, may be 
 put into such form that it will react favourably on the feeling 
 expressed, and make it a surer guide to what is good. The 
 reaction of expression on that which it expresses — of style on 
 the man — is a matter about which Plato had reflected deeplyL 
 as is apparent from his whole scheme of education, mentall 
 moral, and physical, in the Eepuhlic. If, then, the sense of 
 responsibility, and the attendant sense of being a continuously 
 existent Self, naturally express themselves, as Plato holds, Bia 
 μυθοΧο'γίας, pictorially, in visions of an immortal life, it follows 
 from the general law of the reaction of expression on feeling, 
 that, by refining and ennobling μυθολογία, we shall be able to 
 
 I 
 
114 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 refine and ennoble morals and faith. This is the " use " to 
 which μνθο^ is put by Plato, not only in the education of 
 young children, but in dialogues offered to mature readers as 
 models on which they may mould their own conversations 
 about the highest things. This is the "use" of great poetry, 
 like Dante's Commedia, or of great painting, like the fresco on 
 the left-hand wall of the Spanish Chapel — " the most noble 
 piece of pictorial philosophy and divinity in Italy." ^ As 
 philosophy and pictorial composition are blended together in 
 that fresco — the philosophy is seen as a whole, in all the 
 beauty of its μ€y€θo<ζ καΐ τάξις — so are philosophy and poetry 
 blended together where Plato is at his highest — in his Myths. 
 In the Fhaedo Myth the poet -philosopher has taken moral 
 responsibility as the motif of his piece. Moral responsibility 
 cannot, he knows, be explained in scientific terms, as a 
 phenomenon is explained by being put into its proper place 
 among other phenomena ; for moral responsibility attaches 
 immediately to the subject of all phenomena — the continuously 
 existing Self. But if it cannot be explained, moral responsi- 
 bility may be pictured — pictured in a Myth representing the 
 continuity of the responsible Self in terms of Pre-existence, 
 Eeminiscence, Judgment, Penance, Free Choice, Ee-incarnation 
 — a Myth not to be taken literally, but to be dwelt on (χρη 
 τα τοιαύτα ωσιτερ eTraheiv βαυτω), till the charm of it touches 
 one deeply — so deeply that, when the " uninitiated " say " it 
 is not true," one is able to answer by acting as if it were true. 
 
 ^ Ruskin's Mornings in Florence, chap, iv., " The Vaulted Book "; cf. Eenan, 
 Averroes et V Averro'isme, pp. 245, 246. 
 
THE GORGIAS MYTH 
 
 Context 
 
 GORGIAS, the famous teacher of Rhetoric, and his young 
 disciple Polus, meet Socrates at the house of Callicles, an 
 Athenian gentleman ; and the conversation turns on the differ- 
 ence between Rhetoric and the Way of true Knowledge and the 
 true Conduct of Life. 
 
 What is Rhetoric ? Socrates asks. Neither Gorgias nor 
 Polus can give an intelligible answer ; ccnd Socrates answers 
 for them by describing it as the Simutatton^' of Justice, the Jht 
 of getting people to believe what the Professor of the Art wishes 
 them to believe, and they themselves wish, to believe, without 
 regard to t^ruth or justice. It is the Λχί of Mattery. It 
 ignores the distinction between Pleasure and the 'Good — a dis- 
 tinction to the reality of which human nature itself testifies-j-for 
 all men, bad as well as good, wish the Good, and bad men, in 
 doing what they think best for themselves, do what they do not 
 wish to do. To seek after the Good is of the very essence of Life 
 — it is better to suffer evil than to do evil ; and if a man has 
 done evil, it is better for him to be chastised than to escape 
 chastisement. 
 
 Here Ccdlicles, speaking as a man of the world, takes up the 
 argument, and maintains that Siiatesmanship does not recognise 
 this distinction drawn by Socrates between pleasure and the 
 dSfo od. Pleasure is the %)od. Might is Right. 
 ^ After muAih talk Cauicles is silenced, and Socrates points out 
 that there are two kinds of Statesmanship — that which uses 
 Rhetoric as its instrument, and flatters people, and deceives them, 
 holding up Pleasure before them; and that which, keeping the 
 gopi? always in view, makes them better. 4 «^^«^^JweJtAj W ^(^^ 4j 
 
 \J At the Day of Judgment, which tk^- Myth now told by 
 Sem^^aUs. declares, there will be no place for the Art of Flatlery. 
 Pretence will not avail. There will be no side issues then. The . 
 only issue will be : Is this man righteous or is he wicked ? 
 
 With the Myth of the Day of Judgment the Gorgias ends. 
 
 115 
 
 Ο 
 
116 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Gorgias 523 A-527c 
 
 623 "Ajcove Βή, φασί, μαΚα καΧοΰ Xoyov, ον συ μβν η^ησβί 
 μνθον, ώ<ζ εγώ οΐμαί, εγώ Be Xoyov ώς άΧηθή yap οντά 
 σοι, Χέξω α μεΧΧω Xeyetv. ' Ω^σττβρ yap 'Όμηρος Xeyei, 
 Βί€ν€ίμαντο την αρ'χην 6 Ζβύς καϊ 6 ΐΙΧούτων, βττβιΒη τταρα 
 του ττατρος τταράΧαβον. ην οΰν νόμος oBe irepl άνθρώττων 
 €7γΙ Ίίρόνου, καϊ ael καϊ νυν ert βστνν ev θεοΐς, των 
 άνθρώττων τον μεν Βίκαίως τον βίον ΒίβΧθόντα καϊ οσίως, 
 
 Β έτΓβιΒάν τεΧευτήστ), ες μακάρων νήσους άττιοντα οίκείν ev 
 Ίτάση εύΒαιμονία έκτος κακών, τον Be άΒίκως καϊ άθεως 
 εΙς το της τίσεώς re καΧ Βίκης Βεσμωτήριον, ο Βη τάρταρον 
 καΧοΰσιν, Ιεναί. τούτων Βε Βίκασταϊ εττΐ Κ,ρόνου καϊ ετι 
 νεωστί του Αιος την άρ'χτ)ν β'χοντος ζώντες ήσαν ζώντων, 
 εκείντ) τη ημ^ρα Βικάζοντες, fj μεΧΧοίεν τεΧευταν. κακώς 
 οΰν αϊ Βίκαι εκρίνοντο. 6 τε οΰν ΤίΧούτων καϊ οΐ εττιμε- 
 Χηταϊ οί εκ μακάρων νήσων Ιόντες eXεyov ττρος τον Αία, 
 
 C οτί φοίτωεν σφιν άνθρωττοί εκατερωσε ανάξιου, είττεν οΰν 6 
 Ίίεύς, 'Αλλ* εyώ, εφη, τταύσω τοΰτο yίyvόμevov. νυν μεν 
 yap κακώς αΐ Βίκαι Βικάζονται, άμττε'χόμενοι yap, 'ύφη, οί 
 κρινόμενοι κρίνονται* ζώντες yap κρίνονται. ττοΧΧοϊ οΰν, η 
 δ* 6ς, ψύχρας ττονηράς εγοντες ήμφιεσμενοι είσΐ σώματα τε 
 καΧά καϊ yεvη καϊ ττΧούτους, και, εττειΒάν ή κρίσις η, 
 έρχονται αύτοΐς ιτοΧΧοΙ μάρτυρες μαρτυρήσοντες, ώς Βικαίως 
 
 Ό βεβιωκασιν, οί οΰν ΒικασταΙ ύττό τε τούτων εκττΧήττονται, 
 και αμα και αύτοΙ άμττεχόμενοι Βικάζουσι, ττρο της 'ψυχής 
 της αυτών οφθαλμούς και ώτα καϊ οΧον το σώμα ττροκεκα- 
 Χυμμενοι. ταΰτα Βή αύτοΐς ττάντα εττίττροσθεν yίyvετaι, και 
 τα αυτών αμφιεσματα καϊ τα τών κρινόμενων, ττρώτον μεν 
 ουν, εφη, τταυστεον εστί ιτροειΒότας αυτούς τον θάνατον 
 νυν μεν yap ττροισασι. τοΰτο μεν οΰν και Βή εϊρηται τω 
 
 £ ΤΙρομηθεΐ οττως αν τταύση αυτών, εττειτα yυμvoύς κριτεον 
 άττάντων τούτων τεθνεώτας yap Βεΐ κρίνεσθαι. καϊ τον 
 
THE GORGIAS MYTH 11' 
 
 Translation 
 
 Hearken now to an excellent True Story : a Fable, me- 
 thinks, thou wilt deem it ; but I deem it no Fable, for that 
 the things are true, whereof I will now tell, I am fully per- 
 suaded. What Homer telleth, that will I now tell : That Zeus 
 and Poseidon and Pluto divided amongst them the kingdom, 
 when they had received it from their father Cronus. Now, in 
 his time there was this law among the gods concerning men, 
 which standeth fast unto this day as of old, that the man who 
 hath gone through his life righteously in the fear of the Gods, 
 after death goeth to the Isles of the Blessed, and dwelleth there 
 in all felicity beyond the touch of ill ; but the man who hath 
 lived unrighteously without the fear of the Gods before his 
 eyes, he goeth to the prison-house of just retribution, which 
 men call Tartarus. 
 
 They who were Judges in the time of Cronus, and when 
 Zeus was newly come to his kingdom, were living men ; and 
 they also were living men who were judged, each on that day 
 on the which he should die. !N"ow, judgments given thus were 
 ill-given, and Pluto and the Overseers from the Isles of the 
 Blessed came and spake unto Zeus, making complaint that 
 many came unworthily unto either place. Wherefore Zeus 
 said : Verily I will end this ; for now are the judgments given 
 ill, because they who are judged are judged with their raiment 
 on, being judged alive. Many there be, he said, that have evil 
 souls, and, for raiment, have fair bodies and noble birth and 
 riches : when these are judged, many witnesses come to bear 
 witness for them, that they have lived righteously. By these 
 are the Judges confounded ; and, moreover, they themselves 
 sit in judgment with raiment on, having eyes and ears, yea, 
 and the whole Body, as clothing wherewith their Soul is 
 covered. All these things hinder them, to wit, their own 
 raiment, and the raiment of those that are judged. First, then, 
 he said, must they be stopped of their foreknowing the day of 
 their death : for now have they foreknowledge. Wherefore 
 Prometheus hath been charged to stop them of this. Then 
 naked, stripped of all, ^ust they be judged ; for they must be 
 
118 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 κρίτην hel >γυμνον elvai, τβθνβώτα, avrfj rrj ψυχτ) αυτήν την 
 ylrvyrjv θεωρουντα εξαίφνης άττοθανοντος βκαστου, βρημον 
 Ίτάντων των avyyevSiv καΐ καταΚιττόντα iirl της yrj^i ττάντα 
 €Κ€Ϊνον τον κόσμον, ϊνα δικαία η κρίσιν rj. €<γω μεν ουν 
 ταύτα βγζ/ω^ώ? πρότερο^; ή νμβΐς βττοιησάμην Βίκαστας νί€Ϊς 
 €μαυτοΰ, Βύο μεν €Κ της ^ Ασίας, Μ^ίνω Τ6 καΐ ΎαΒάμανθνν, 
 524 €va Be i/c της Έ/ύρώττης, ΑΙακόν. ούτοι ουν, εττειΒαν 
 τελβυτησωσι, Βυκάσουσιν iv τω Χευμωνι, ev Tjj τριοΒω, εξ 
 ης φερετον τω οΒώ, ή μεν εΙς μακάρων νήσους, η δ* εΙς 
 τάρταρον. και τους μεν εκ της ^Ασίας ΎαΒάμανθυς κρίνει, 
 τους Βε εκ της Έιύρώττης ΑΙακός- Μίνω Βε ττρεσβεΐα Βώσω 
 ετΓίΒιακρίνείν, εαν άττορήτόν tl τω ετέρω, ΐνα ως Βίκαωτάτη 
 ή κρίσις 7] ΊτερΙ της ττορείας τοις άνθρώττοις. 
 
 Ύαΰτ εστίν, ω Κ,αΧΚίκΧεις, α εγώ άκηκοως τηστεύω 
 
 Β αληθή εΙναί' καΐ εκ τούτων των λογωζ/ τοιόνΒε τι \ο>γίζομαο 
 συμβαίνειν. Ό θάνατος τυ<γχ^ανεί ων, ως εμοί Βοκεΐ, ούΒεν 
 άΧΚο ή Βυοΐν 7Γpayμάτoίv ΒίόΧυσυς, της Λίτυχης καϊ του 
 σώματος, άττ άΧΧήΧοιν. εττειΒαν Βε ΒίαΧυθήτον άρα άττ 
 άΧΧήΧοι,ν, ου ττόΧύ ήττον εκάτερον αύτοΐν έχει την εξιν 
 την αυτού ήνττερ καϊ οτε εζη 6 άνθρωττος, τ6 τε σώμα την 
 φύσιν την αυτού καϊ τα θεραττεύματα καϊ τα τταθηματα, 
 
 C ενΒηΧα ττάντα. οίον εϊ τόνος με^α ήν το σώμα φύσει η 
 τροφβ ή αμφότερα ζώντος, τούτου καϊ εττειΒαν αττοθάντ} 6 
 νεκρός με'γας* καϊ εΐ τταγύς, τταγυς και άττοθανόντος, καϊ 
 ταΧΧα οΰτως. καϊ ει αΰ εττετηΒευε κομαν, κομήτης τούτου 
 καϊ 6 νεκρός, μαστί'γίας αυ εϊ τις ην καϊ ϊχνη εΐ'χε τών 
 ττΧη'γών ούΧας εν τω σώματι η ύττο μαστιγών ή άΧΧων 
 τραυμάτων ζών, καϊ τεθνεώτος το σώμα εστίν ιΒεΐν ταύτα 
 ε'χον. κατεαηοτα τε εϊ του ήν μεΧη ή Βιεστραμμενα ζώντος, 
 
 D καϊ τεθνεώτος ταύτα ταύτα ενΒηΧα. ενϊ Βε λόγω, οίος είναι 
 τταρεσκευαστο το σώμα ζών, ενΒηΧα ταύτα καϊ τεΧευτή- 
 σαντος η ττάντα ή τα ττοΧΧα εττί τίνα 'χ^ρόνον. ταύτον Βή 
 μοι Βοκεΐ τούτ άρα καϊ ττερϊ την ψνγ^ην είναι, ώ 
 ΚαΧΧικΧεις' ενΒηΧα ττάντα εστϊν εν τη ψυχβ, εττειΒάν 
 ιγυμνωθ'ρ τού σώματος, τά τε τής φύσεως καϊ τα τταθηματα 
 α Βια την εττιτήΒευσιν εκάστου ττpάyμaτoς εσγεν εν ττ} 
 
THE GORGIAS MYTH 119 
 
 judged dead. The Judge also must be naked, dead, with very 
 Soul beholding the very Soul of each, as soon as he is dead, 
 bereft of all his kindred, having left upon the earth all the 
 adornment he had there. So shall the judgment be just. I 
 therefore, having considered all these things before that ye 
 came unto me, have made my sons Judges — two from Asia, 
 Minos and Ehadamanthys, and one from Europe, Aeacus. 
 These, when they are dead, shall sit in judgment in the 
 Meadow at the Parting of the Ways, whence the two Ways 
 lead — the one unto the Isles of the Blessed, and the other unto 
 Tartarus. And those of Asia shall Ehadamanthys judge, and 
 those of Europe, Aeacus. But unto Minos will I appoint the 
 chief place, that he may give judgment at the last, if the other 
 two be in doubt as touching any matter. Thus shall the 
 judgments concerning the Passage of Men be most just. 
 
 These are the things, Ο Callicles, which I have heard ; 
 and I believe that they are true ; moreover, therefrom I con- 
 clude this, to wit : — Death is only the separation of two things, 
 Soul and Body, from each other. When they have been 
 separated from each other, the state of each of them is well 
 nigh the same it was while the man lived. The Body keepeth 
 the natural fashion it had, and the marks plain of all the 
 care that was taken for it and of all that happened unto it. 
 For if any man while he lived was great of body, by nature, 
 or nurture, or both, his corpse also is great when he is dead ; 
 and if he was fat, his corpse also is fat when he is dead ; 
 also, if any man wore long hair, his corpse also hath long 
 hair ; and if any man was a whipped cur, and bore on his 
 body the prints of his beatings — scars made by the whip, or 
 scars of other wounds — while he lived, when he is dead thou 
 mayest see his corpse with the same ; and if any man had his 
 limbs broken and disjoint while he lived, when he is dead also 
 the same is plain. The sum of the whole matter is, that what- 
 soever conditions of Body a man hath while he liveth, these 
 are plain when he is dead, all or most, for some while. 
 
 Now, Callicles, that which happeneth unto the Body, 
 happeneth, methinks, unto the Soul likewise, to wit, there are 
 plain in the Soul, after she hath been stripped of the Body, her 
 natural conditions and those affections which, through use in 
 any matter, a man hath gotten in his Soul. 
 
120 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ylrvyrj 6 άνθρωττο^;, Έττε^δάι^ οΐιν άφίκωνταί τταρα τον 
 
 Ε Βίκαστήν, οΐ μεν έκ της ^ Ασίας τταρα τον 'ΡαΒάμανθυν, 6 
 ΎαΒάμανθνς εκείνους ετηστησας θβαταί εκάστου την 'ψυ'χ^ην, 
 ουκ εΙΒως ότου εστίν, άΧλα ττοΧλάκίς του με<γάΧου 
 βασίΧέως εττιλαβόμενος η άΧΧου οτουουν βασιλέως ή 
 Βυνάστου κατεΐΒεν ούΒεν ύγίέ? 6ν της ψυχής, αλλά 
 Βίαμεμαστί'γωμενην καϊ ούΧών μεστην ύττο εττίορκιών καΐ 
 525 άΒίκίας, α εκάστω ή ττραξις αυτού εξωμορξατο εις την 
 ψυχην, καϊ ττάντα σκοΧια ύττο ψεύΒους καϊ αλαζονείας καϊ 
 ούΒεν ευθύ Βία το άνευ αληθείας τεθράφθαί• καϊ ύττο 
 εξουσίας καϊ τρυφης καϊ ύβρεως καϊ άκρατίας των ττράξεων 
 ασυμμετρίας τε καϊ αίσχρότητος ^εμούσαν την ψυχην εΙΒεν. 
 ίΒων Βε άτίμως ταύτην άττεττεμψεν ευθύ της φρουράς, οΙ 
 μέλλει, ελθουσα άνατΧηναι τα ττροσηκοντα ττάθη. 
 
 Β ΥΙροσηκευ Βε τταντί τω εν τιμωρία ovtl ύττ* αΧλου 
 
 ορθώς τίμωρουμενω η βεΧτίονι ^ί^νεσθαί καϊ ονίνασθαί ή 
 ΊταραΒεί^^ματυ τοΐς αλΧοις 'γί'γνεσθαι, ϊν άΧΧοι όρώντες 
 ττάσγοντα α αν ιτάσγτι φοβούμενου βεΧτίους ηίηνωνται, 
 είσΐ Βε οΐ μεν ωφελούμενοι τε καϊ Βίκην ΒιΒόντες ύττο θεών 
 τε καϊ άνθρώττων ούτοι, οΐ αν ιάσιμα αμαρτήματα 
 άμάρτωσιν όμως Βε Βι άΧ<γηΒ6νων καϊ οΒυνών ^ίηνεται 
 αύτοίς η ωφέλεια κα\ ενθάΒε καϊ εν "ΑιΒου* ού yap οϊόν 
 
 C τ€ αλλω? άΒικίας άτταΧΧάττεσθαΐ' οΐ Β αν τα έσχατα 
 άΒικήσωσι και Βια τα τοιαύτα οΒικηματα ανίατοι ηενωνται, 
 εκ τούτων τα τταραΒείηματα ηίηνεται, καϊ ούτοι αύτοι μεν 
 ούκετι ονίνανται ούΒεν, άτε ανίατοι οντες, άΧΧοι Βε ονίναν- 
 ται οι τούτους ορώντες Βια τας αμαρτίας τα μέγιστα καϊ 
 οΒυνηροτατα καϊ φοβερωτατα ττάθη ττάσχοντας τον άει 
 χρονον, άτεγνώς τταραΒεί^ματα ανηρτημένους εκεί εν '^ΑιΒου 
 εν τω Βεσμωτηρίω, τοΐς άεΐ των άΒίκων άφικνουμενοις 
 
 D θεάματα καϊ νουθετηματα. ων iyclo φημι ενα καϊ ΑρχεΧαον 
 εσεσθαι, ει άΧηθη Χε<γει Πώλο?, και άλλον όστις αν 
 τοιούτος τύραννος y. οΐμαι Βε καϊ τους ττοΧλούς είναι 
 τους τούτων των τταραΒει^ μάτων εκ τυράννων καϊ βασιλέων 
 καϊ Βυναστών καϊ τα των ττολεων ττραξάντων ^ε^ονότας' 
 ούτοι yap Βια την εξουσίαν μεyιστa καϊ άνοσιώτατα 
 άμαρτηαατα άμαρτάνουσι. μαρτυρεί Βε τούτοις καϊ ^^Ο μηρός' 
 βασιλέας yap καϊ Βυνάστας εκείνος ττεττοίηκε τους εν 
 
THE GOBGIAS MYTH 121 
 
 Wherefore, when they from Asia are come before the 
 presence of Khadamanthys their Judge, he causeth them to 
 stand, and looketh at the Soul of each, not knowing whose 
 Soul it is ; but perchance having gotten hold of the Soul of 
 the Great King, or of some other King or Euler, perceiveth 
 that it hath no soundness, but is seamed with the marks of 
 many stripes, and full of the scars of perjuries and unrighteous- 
 ness, according as the doings of each have stamped on his 
 Soul their signs ; and all therein is crooked by reason of false- 
 hood and boasting, and nothing straight, because he hath 
 been bred up without truth ; and by reason of pride and 
 luxury and wantonness and incontinency in his life, his Soul 
 is altogether deformed and foul. This Soul then the Judge 
 seeth, and having seen, sendeth with dishonour straightway 
 unto the prison, whither it must go and endure the tor- 
 ments appointed for it. Now, it is appointed for every one 
 who is punished, if he be punished righteously by another, 
 either to become better and himself receive benefit, or to be set 
 forth for an example unto others, that they, seeing his torments, 
 may fear and become better. ISTow, they who are profited the 
 while they pay unto Gods and Men the penalty of their sins, 
 are they whose sins may be cured. Through afflictions and 
 pains there cometh unto them profit both here and in the 
 House of Hades ; for otherwise can no man be rid of un- 
 righteousness. 
 
 But they who have sinned to the utmost, and by reason 
 of their great sins are beyond cure, they are the examples 
 whereof I spake ; for now they cannot themselves be benefited, 
 inasmuch as they are beyond cure, but other men are benefited, 
 when they see them by reason of their sins suffering torments 
 exceeding great and terrible for evermore, being verily examples 
 hung up in the House of Hades, in the prison-house, for a 
 spectacle and admonition unto every sinner which cometh. 
 
 Of these that be set forth for examples I say that 
 Archelaus will be, if Polus speaketh truly ; and any other 
 Prince that is like unto him. Most, methinks, were Princes 
 and Kings and Eulers and Chief Men in their cities ; for they, 
 by reason of the power they have, do sin more heinously than 
 other men. Whereof Homer is witness, in that he telleth that 
 they which are torment^ in the House of Hades for evermore 
 
122 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Β'ΆιΒον τον ael γ^ρόνον τιμωρούμενους, ΎάνταΧον /cat Χίσυφον 
 καΐ Ύιτυόν. θβρσίτην Be, καΐ ei rt? αλΧος ττονηρος ην 
 ίΒιώτης, ονΒβΙς ττεττοίηκβ β€<γά\αί<; τίμωρίαος συνεγ^ομβνον 
 ώς άνίατον ου yap, οΐμαι, βζήν αύτω- 8ώ καΙ βύΒαιμονί- 
 στβρος ην η οίς έξην. άλλα yap, ω Καλλ/^λε^?, ifc των 
 626 Βυναμένων βίσϊ καΐ οι σφοΒρα ττονηροι ^ι^νομενοι άνθρωποι• 
 ούΒβν μην κωΧύει και iv τούτοις άβαθους άνΒρας iyyi- 
 yveaOai, και σφοΒρα ye άξιον ayaaOai των yιyvoμevωv' 
 ^aXeirov yap, ω li^aXkiKXei^, και ττοΧλοΰ έτταίνου άξιον iv 
 μeyά\rj εξουσία του aBiKeiv yev6μevov Βικαίως Βιαβιώναι. 
 oXlyoi Be yiy νονται οι τοιούτοι' eVel καΐ ivdaBe καΐ άΧ- 
 Χοθι yeybvaaiv, οίμαι Be κα\ €σονται καΧοι KayaOol ταύτην 
 
 Β την apeTrjv, την του Βικαίως Bιa'χeιpίζeιv α άν τις eiriTpeirr)' 
 ζΐς Be καΐ πάνυ eXX6yιμoς yeyove καΐ eις τους άΧΧους 
 '^ΕΧΧηνας, ^ApιστeίBης 6 Αυσιμάχ^ου. οι Be ττοΧΧοί, ω 
 άριστ€, κακοί yiyvovTai των Βυναστων. 
 
 ^'Oirep ουν eXeyov, eireiBav 6 '^αΒάμανθυς €Κ€Ϊνος 
 τοιούτον τίνα Χάβη, άΧΧο μίν irepi αυτού ουκ olBev ούΒέν, 
 οΰθ* όστις οΰθ^ ώντινων, οτι Be ττονηρός τις* και τούτο 
 κατιΒων ά7Γe7Γeμ^fr€v eις τάρταρον e'πισημηvάμevoς, eav re 
 
 C Ιάσιμος eav re ανίατος Βοκη elvai' 6 Be eκeΐσe άφικoμevoς 
 τά προσήκοντα ττάσχε^. evίoτe δ' άΧΧην €ίσιΒων οσίως 
 β€βιωκυΐαν και μ€τ άXηθeίaς, άνΒρος ΙΒιωτου η άΧΧου 
 τίνος, μάΧιστα μέν, έγωγε φημι, ω ΊίaXXίκXeις, φιΧοσόφου 
 τά αυτού ττράξαντος καΐ ου 7ΓoXυlτpayμovήσavτoς iv τω 
 βίω, ήyάσθη re καΐ e? μακάρων νήσους άττεττε/χλ/τε. ταύτα 
 ταύτα και 6 Αιακός. ίκάτ€ρος Be τούτων ράβΒον 'βγων 
 Βικάζ€ΐ. 6 Be Μ,ίνως i'πισκo^Γωv κάθηται, μόνος €χ^ων 
 
 Ό χ^ρυσούν σκητττρον, ως φησιν ^OBυσσeύς 6 'Ομήρου IBeiv 
 αύτον 
 
 χρν(Γ€θν σκηπτρον έχοντα, θζμισηνοντα νίκνσσιν. 
 
 Εγώ μ€ν ουν, ω K.aXXίκXeις, ύττο τούτων των Xόyωv 
 ΊΓe7Γeισμaι, καΐ σκοττώ, όπως άποφανούμαι τω κριτή ώς 
 ύyιeστάτηv την ψυχήν. ^^alpeiv ουν iάσaς τάς τιμάς τάς 
 
THE GORGIAS MYTH 123 
 
 are Kings and Kulers, to wit, Tantalus, and Sisyphus, and Tityus. 
 But of Thersites, or any other Commoner which was an evil- 
 doer, no poet hath told that he is held in great torments as 
 being beyond cure : nay, methinks, such an one had not the 
 opportunity to sin greatly. Wherefore also he was happier 
 than those who had opportunity. Verily, Callicles, 'tis 
 from among those who have power that the greatest sinners 
 come, notwithstanding even among these may good men arise ; 
 whom, when they are found, it is most meet to reverence, 
 for 'tis a hard thing, Callicles, and worthy of all praise, 
 for a man, who hath great opportunity to do injustice, to live 
 justly all his days. Few such are found ; yet are some found ; 
 for both here and elsewhere have there arisen, and, methinks, 
 will arise again, men of a noble virtue and just conduct in 
 those matters whereof charge at any time is given unto them : 
 of whom was Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, a man famous 
 throughout all Greece: but I tell thee. Sir, of them that 
 have power in cities the most part are alway evil. 
 
 When one of these evil men, therefore, standeth, as I told, 
 before Ehadamanthys the Judge, he knoweth nought else 
 concerning him, neither who he is nor whose son, but only 
 this, that he is one of the wicked ; and perceiving this, sendeth 
 him away unto Tartarus, having put a mark upon him to 
 signify whether he can be cured or no : and he, coming to 
 that place, there suffereth that which is due. 
 
 But perchance the Judge seeth a Soul that hath lived in 
 holiness and truth ; it may be, the Soul of a Common Man or 
 of some other ; but in most likelihood, say I, of a Philosopher, 
 Callicles, who hath minded his own matters and been no 
 busybody in his life. That Soul pleaseth the eye of Ehada- 
 manthys, and he sendeth it away to the Islands of the Blessed. 
 
 In like manner Aeacus also judgeth. And each of these 
 sitteth in judgment holding a rod in his hand. But Minos is 
 seated as president over them ; and he alone hath a golden 
 sceptre, as Homer his Odysseus telleth, that he saw him 
 " with a golden sceptre in his hand giving laws unto the 
 Dead." 
 
 I am persuaded, Callicles, that these things that are 
 told are true. Wherefore I consider how I shall show my 
 Soul most faultless befoi^ the Judge. I will take my farewell 
 
124 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 των ΤΓοΧΧών άνθρώττων, την άΧήθβιαν σκοττών ιτζίράσομαι 
 τώ οντι ώς αν Βννωμαι βύΧτίστος ων καΐ ζην καί, iirethav 
 Ε αττοθνησκω^ αττοθνησκβι,ν. τταρακαΧώ Be καϊ τους άΧΧονς 
 ττάντας άνθρώτΓονς, καθ* όσον Βύναμαι, καϊ 8η καϊ σβ 
 άντίτταρακαΧώ βττϊ τούτον τον βίον καϊ τον aycova τούτον, 
 ον €<γώ φημι άντϊ ττάντων των ένθάΒβ αγώνων elvac, καϊ 
 ονβιΒίζω σοί, otl ουχ οΐός τ eaei σαυτω βοηθήσαο, όταν 
 η Βίκη σοι η καϊ η κρίσίς ην νυν Βη εγώ eXeyov, άλλα 
 εΧθων τταρα τον Βικαστην τον της ΑΙ^ίνης υΐόν, βττβιΒάν 
 627 σου €7ΓίΧαβ6μ6νος οίγτ;, 'χασμησβι καϊ ίΧυ^^ιάσζΐς ούΒβν 
 ήττον ή €γώ βνθάΒβ συ €Κ€Ϊ, καϊ σε ϊσως τυτττησβι τις καϊ 
 67γΪ κόρρης άτίμως καϊ ττάντως ττροττηΧακιβΐ. Τάχα Β οΰν 
 ταύτα μύθος σοι Βοκ€Ϊ Χε^εσθαι, ωσττερ ^ραος, καϊ κατα- 
 φρονείς αυτών, καϊ ούΒεν γ αν ην θαυμαστον καταφρονβΐν 
 τούτων, €Ϊ ΊΓΎ] ζητουντες εΧγομεν αυτών βεΧτίω καϊ 
 άΧηθέστερα εύρεΐν νυν Βε οράς, οτι τρεις οντες ύμεΐς, 
 οΐΊτερ σοφώτατοί εστε τών νυν 'ΈιΧΧηνων, συ τε καϊ Πώλο? 
 Β καϊ Τορ^ίας, ουκ έχετε άττοΒεΐξαι, ώς Βεΐ άΧΧον τίνα βίον 
 ζην η τούτον, οσττερ καϊ εκεΐσε φαίνεται συμφέρων, άλλ* 
 εν τοσούτοις Xoyoις τών άΧΧων εXεyχ^oμεvωv μόνος οΰτος 
 ηρεμεί 6 Xoyoς, ώς εύΧαβητεον εστϊ το άΒικεΙν μάΧΧον η 
 το άΒικεΐσθαι, καϊ τταντος μαΧΧον άνΒρϊ μεΧετητεον ου το 
 Βοκεΐν είναι ayaOov, άλλα το είναι καϊ ΙΒία καϊ Βημοσία' 
 εαν Βε τις κατά τι κακός yίyvητaι, κοΧαστεος εστί, καϊ 
 τούτο Βεύτερον ayaOov μετά το είναι Βίκαιον, το yίyvεσθaι 
 καϊ κοΧαζομενον ΒιΒόναι Βίκην καϊ ττάσαν κοΧακείαν καϊ 
 την ττερϊ εαυτόν καϊ την ττερϊ τους αΧΧους, καϊ ττερϊ 
 6Xίyoυς καϊ ττερϊ ττοΧΧούς, φευκτεον καϊ τη ρητορική 
 οΰτω γ^ρηστεον, εττϊ το Βίκαιον αεί, καϊ τη αΧΧη ττάση 
 ττράξει. 
 
THE GOBGIAS MYTH 125 
 
 of the honours that are among men ; and, considering Truth, 
 will strive earnestly after Kighteousness, both to live therein 
 so far as I am able, and when I die, therein also to die. And 
 I exhort all men, so far as I am able, and thee more especially 
 do I exhort and entreat, to enter into this life and run this 
 race, which, I say unto thee, is above all the races wherein 
 men strive ; and I tell thee, to thy shame, that thou shalt not 
 be able to help thyself, when the Day of Judgment whereof I 
 spake cometh unto thee, but when thou dost appear before 
 the Judge, the son of Aegina, and he hath gotten hold of thee 
 to take thee, thou shalt gape and become dizzy there, even as I 
 do here ; yea and perchance some one will smite thee on the 
 cheek to dishonour thee, and will utterly put thee to despite. 
 
 Perchance this shall seem to thee as an old wife's fable, 
 and thou wilt despise it : well mightest thou despise it, if by 
 searching we could find out aught better and truer. But as 
 the matter standeth, thou seest that ye are three, the wisest 
 men of Greece living at this day, thou and Polus and Gorgias, 
 and ye cannot show any other life that a man must live save 
 this whereof I have spoken, which is plainly expedient also 
 for that other life ; nay, of all sayings this saying alone is 
 not confuted, but abideth sure: — That a man must shun the 
 doing of wrong more than the receiving, and study above all 
 things not to seem, but to be, righteous in the doing of his 
 own business and the business of the city ; and that if any 
 man be found evil in anything, he is to be corrected ; and that 
 the next good thing after being righteous is to become righteous 
 through correction and just retribution ; and that all flattery of 
 himself and of other men, be they few or many, he must 
 eschew ; and that he must use Oratory and all other Instru- 
 ments of Doing, for the sake of Justice alway. 
 
126 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Observations on the Gorgias Myth 
 
 I 
 
 Here, again, as in the Phaedo Myth, it is Besponsihility 
 which Plato represents in a picture — a picture portraying the 
 continuity of the Self through the series of its life-stages. 
 It is in the consciousness of Responsibility — of being the 
 cause of actions for which he takes praise and blame — 
 that man first becomes conscious of Self as a constant in 
 experience. Consciousness of an active — a responsible, or 
 moral Self, is formally prior to consciousness of a passive, 
 sensitive. Self realised as the one mirror in which sense- 
 impressions are successively reflected. Thus, the Gorgias 
 Myth gives a strictly natural representation of the Idea of 
 Soul, when it sets forth, in a vision of Judgment, Penance, 
 and Purification, the continuity and sameness of the active, as 
 distinguished from the passive — of the responsible or moral, 
 as distinguished from the sensitive Self. It is only in vision 
 — in Myth — and not scientifically, that the Idea of Soul, or 
 Subject, can be represented, or held up to contemplation as 
 an Object at all ; and it is best represented, that is, in the 
 manner most suitable, not only to our consciousness of respon- 
 sibility, but to our hope and fear, if it is represented in a 
 vision of Judgment and Penance and Purification, where the 
 departed are not the passive victims of vengeance, τίμωρία, 
 but actively develop their native powers under the discipline 
 of correction, κόΧασις} In such a vision it is consciousness 
 of wrong done and fear (that fear mentioned by Cephalus in 
 the Republic) ^ which conjure up the spectacle of punishment ; 
 but hope, springing from the sense of personal endeavour after 
 the good, speaks comfortably to the heart, and says, "If .only 
 
 1 What we call sin 
 I could believe a painful opening out 
 Of paths for ampler virtue. 
 
 Clough, Dipsychus. 
 
 felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum 
 Meruit habere Eedemptorem ! 
 Easter hymn quoted by Leibniz, Thhdicee, p. 507, ed. Erdmann. 
 2 380 ε. 
 
THE GOBGIAS MYTH 127 
 
 a man will strive steadfastly to overcome evil passions in this 
 life, and in future lives, all will be well with him in the end. 
 The very punishment which he fears will be for his ultimate 
 good, for punishment regards the future which can still be 
 modified, not the past which cannot be undone." Pardon — 
 for so we may bring home to ourselves the deeper meaning of 
 Plato's κάθαρσίς — Pardon is thus involved in Punishment. 
 This is a thought which cannot be set forth by the way of 
 Science. Pardon is not found in the realm of Nature which 
 Sciejice describes. It "comes of the Grace of God." It is 
 t^ceived under another dispensation than that of Nature — a 
 dispensation under which a man comes by " Faith " — Faith 
 which Science can only chill, but Myth may confirm. Χρη 
 τα τοιαύτα ώσττβρ eiraheiv βαντω. 
 
 Besides containing this notable theory of Punishment 
 and Pardon, the Gorgias Myth is remarkable for its power- 
 ful imaginative rendering of the wonder with which man 
 regards death — a rendering which is best taken side by side 
 with another given in the Cratylus, 403, 4. Hades, Αί'δτ;?, 
 the God of Death, Socrates says in the Cratylus, is not called, 
 as most people in their fear suppose, άττο του άειΒοΰς — he is 
 not the terrible Unseen One, who keeps the Dead in Hell, 
 against their will, bound in the fetters of necessity. He is 
 rather called άττο τον ττάντα τα καΧα elhevai — he is the 
 All-wise, the Philosopher, who, indeed, holds the Dead in 
 fetters, but not against their will ; for his fetters are those of 
 that desire which, in disembodied souls, is stronger than 
 necessity — the desire of knowledge. The Dead cleave to 
 Hades as disciples cleave to a great master of wisdom. The 
 wisest of men go to learn of him, and will not return from 
 his companionship. He charms the charmers themselves — 
 the Sirens -^ — so that they will not leave him. He is rightly 
 
 1 The Sirens, although they became eventually simply iluses, were originally 
 Chthonian deities, and as such are sculptured on tombs and painted on lekythi : 
 see Miss Harrison's Myths of the Odyssey, pp. 156-166 ; her Mythology and 
 Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. 582 if. ; and her article in J.H.S. vol. vi. 
 pp. 19 IF. ("Odysseus and the Sirens — Dionysiac Boat-races — Cylix of 
 Nicosthenes "), 1885. "As monuments on tombs, the Sirens," writes Miss 
 Harrison {Myth, and Mon. p. 584), "seem to have filled a double function; 
 they were sweet singers, fit to be set on the grave of poet or orator, and tliey 
 Avere mourners to lament for the beauty of youtli and maiden. It is somewhat 
 curious that they are never sculptured on Attic tombs in the one function that 
 makes their relation to death clearly intelligible— i.e. that of death-angels. The 
 
128 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 called Pluto, because he has the true riches — wisdom. Here 
 we have what is really a Myth offered in satisfaction of the 
 deep wonder with which man regards that undiscovered 
 country from whose bourn no traveller returns. Plato 
 appeals openly to the " science of etymology " in support 
 of his " myth," and, I would suggest, also appeals tacitly to 
 traditional cultus : — Hades communicates true oracles to those 
 who go down into his cave to sleep the sleep of death — truer 
 oracles than those dreams which Trophonius sends to the 
 living who sleep in his cave at Lebadia.^ It is only with the 
 disembodied soul that Hades will hold his dialectic, for only 
 the disembodied soul, freed from the distractions of the bodily 
 passions, can experience that invincible desire of knowledge, 
 that €ρω<; without which ΒιαΧβκτίκή is vain, which makes 
 the learner leave all and cleave to his Teacher. In this, that 
 he will hold converse only with the disembodied soul. Hades 
 declares himself the true Philosopher. It is at this point 
 that the connection appears between the Cratylus Myth — for 
 we may call it a Myth — and the Gorgias Myth. The judges 
 in the Gorgias Myth are naked souls (the phrase 7) ψνχτ) 
 ^γυμνη του σώματος occurs also in Cratylus, 403 b) — naked 
 souls, without blindness or bias of the flesh, which see naked 
 souls through and through, and pass true judgment upon 
 them — 
 
 There must be wisdom with Great Death : 
 
 The dead shall look me thro' and thro'. 
 
 The wondering thought, that death may perhaps solve the 
 enigma of life, has never been more impressively rendered 
 than in these twin Myths of the Philosopher Death and the 
 Dead Judges of the Dead. 
 
 Siren of the Attic graves must surely be somehow connected with the bird death- 
 angels that appear on the Harpy tomb, but her function as such seems to have 
 been usurped for Attica by the male angels Death and Sleep." 
 Eriuna's epitaph — 
 
 {Γταλαί, καΐ Σ€φην€$ έμαί, καί πένθιμε κρωσσέ, 
 δστίί ^xeis Άΐδα ταν dXLyav σποδίάν — 
 
 brings the Sirens and Hades into connection just as Crat. 403 d does — 5ta ταΰτα 
 άρα φώμερ, ώ Έρμ6'γ€ΐ^€$, ούδένα δεΰρο έθϊΚησαί άττέλθεΐν των iKeWev, ουδέ auras 
 τά$ Σειρψαί, αλλά κατακβκλησθαι iiceivas re καΐ τού$ aWovs ττάντας' οϋτω καλούί 
 TLvaSy ώί ioiKev, ένίσταται Xoyovs λέ-γειν 6 "Αιδη$. According to Mr. J. P. Post- 
 gate {Journal of Philology, ix. pp. 109 if., "A Philological Examination of the 
 Myth of the Sirens"), thev are singing birds = souls winged for flight hence. 
 1 Cf. Rohde, Psyche, i. 115 ff. 
 
THE GOEGIAS MYTH 129 
 
 II 
 
 Another point, and I have done with the " Philosophy " 
 of the Gorgias Myth. I am anxious to have done with it, 
 because I know that the " Philosophy of a Myth " too easily 
 becomes " the dogmatic teaching which it covertly conveys " ; 
 but I trust that in the foregoing remarks I have avoided, and 
 in the following remarks shall continue to avoid, the error of 
 treating a Myth as if it were an Allegory. The point is this. 
 The incurably wicked who suffer eternal punishment are 
 mostly tyrants — men like Archelaus and Tantalus, who had 
 the opportunity of committing the greatest crimes, and used 
 it. All praise to the few who had the opportunity and did 
 not use it. But Thersites, a mere private offender, no poet 
 has ever condemned to eternal punishment. He had not the 
 opportunity of committing the greatest crimes, and in this is 
 happier than those offenders who had. Here a mystery is set 
 forth. The man who has the opportunity of committing the 
 greatest crimes, and yields to the special temptation to which 
 he is exposed, is held worthy of eternal damnation, which is 
 escaped by the offender who has it not in his power, and has 
 never been effectively tempted, to commit such crimes. First, 
 the greatness of the crime is estimated as if it were a mere 
 quantity standing in no relation to the quality of the agent ; 
 and then the quality of the agent is determined by the 
 quantity of the crime ; so that vice with large opportunity 
 comes out as infinitely worse than vice with narrow Oppor- 
 tunity, the former receiving eternal punishment, the latter 
 suffering correction only for a limited time. This mystery of 
 the infinite difference between vice with large opportunity and 
 vice with narrow opportunity — the mystery which is set forth 
 in " lead us not into temptation " — this mystery is set forth 
 by Plato in the Gorgias Myth as a mystery, without any 
 attempt at explanation : " Men born to great power do not 
 start with the same chance of ultimate salvation as men born 
 to private stations." "With that the Gorgias Myth leaves us. 
 In the Vision of Er, however, an explanation is offered — but 
 still the explanation, no less than the mystery to be explained, 
 is mythically set forth— ^not to satisfy the understanding, but 
 
 Κ 
 
130 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 to give relief to feeling in imaginative expression. The 
 explanation offered in the Vision of Er is that the Soul, before 
 each incarnation, is free, within certain limits, to choose, and 
 as a matter of fact does choose, its station in life — whether it 
 be the station of a tyrant with large opportunity of doing 
 evil, or that of a private person with narrow opportunity. In 
 this way the mystery of the Gorgias Myth is " explained " — 
 explained by another Myth. 
 
 So much for the " Philosophy " of the Gorgias Myth — so 
 much for the great problems raised in it. Now let me add a 
 few notes on some other points, for the better appreciation of 
 the Myth itself as concrete product of creative imagination. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The judged are marked (Gorg. 526 b) as "corrigible" or 
 "incorrigible." So, too, in the Myth of Er {Bep. 614 c) 
 those sent to Heaven have tablets fixed in front, those sent to 
 Tartarus tablets fixed behind, on which their deeds and 
 sentences are recorded. The idea of tablets may have been 
 derived from the Orphic custom of placing in the graves of 
 the dead tablets describing the way to be taken and the 
 things to be done on the journey through the other world.-^ 
 
 Before Dante enters Purgatory the Angel at the Gate 
 marks him with " seven P's, to denote the seven sins {peccata) 
 of which he was to be cleansed in his passage through 
 Purgatory " — 
 
 Seven times 
 The letter that denotes the inward stain 
 He on my forehead, with the blunted point 
 Of his drawn sword, inscribed. And " Look," he cried, 
 " When entered, that thou wash these scars away." ^ 
 
 The judgment-seat of Minos, Ehadamanthys, and Aeacus 
 is iv τω Χβίμώνί, iv rrj τρίόΒω, έξ ης φβρβτον τω όδώ, ή 
 
 1 See Comparetti, J. Η. S. iii. Ill, and Dieterich, Nekyia, 85, on the gold 
 tablets of Thurii and Petelia ; and cf. p. 156 ff. infra. The Orphic custom 
 itself may have come from Egypt, where texts from the Book of the Dead were 
 buried with the corpse. The Book of the Dead was a guide-book for the Ka, or 
 Double, which is apt to wander from the body and lose its way. See Jevons' 
 Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 323, and Flinders Petrie's Egyptian 
 Tales, second series, p. 124. 
 
 2 Purg. ix. 101, and see Gary's note ad loc. 
 
THE GORGIAS MYTH 131 
 
 μ€ν eh μακάρων νήσους, ή Β βίς Ύάρταρον {Gorg. 524 α). 
 The topography of this passage corresponds with that of Rep. 
 614 c if., where, however, it is added that the Χειμών of the 
 judgment-seat is also the spot in which the souls, returned 
 from their thousand years' sojourn in Tartarus and Heaven 
 (i.e. the Islands of the Blessed), meet, and rest, before going 
 on to the place where they choose their new lives before 
 drinking of the water of Lethe. In the Gorgias the two 
 ways mentioned are (1) that to Tartarus, and (2) that to the 
 Islands of the Blessed ; and the Χβίμών of judgment is " at 
 the parting of the ways " — iv rfi τριόΒω, — no reference being 
 made to a third way leading to the throne of Necessity, and 
 thence to the Plain of Lethe. In the parallel passage in 
 Hep. 614 c £f. the ways are not mentioned as three; but 
 they are three — (1) the way to Tartarus, (2) the way to 
 Heaven, and (3) the way to the Plain of Lethe — all three 
 diverging from the Χβιμών. 
 
 The " Three Ways," as indicated in the Myth of Er, — one 
 to Tartarus, one to Heaven, and the third to Lethe (a river of 
 the surface of the Earth), — constantly occur in the literature 
 which reflects Orphic influence.^ They even appear in the 
 folk-lore represented by the story of Thomas the Khymer : — 
 
 Light down, light down now, true Thomas, 
 And lean your head upon my knee : 
 Abide, and rest a little space, 
 And I will show you ferlies three. 
 
 Oh see ye not yon narrow road, 
 So thick beset wi' thorns and briars 1 
 That is the path of righteousness, 
 Though after it but few inquires. 
 
 And see not ye that braid braid road. 
 That lies across the lily leven ? 
 That is the path of wickedness. 
 Though some call it the road to Heaven. 
 
 And see not ye that bonny road. 
 That winds about the fernie brae ? 
 That is the road to fair Elf-land, 
 Where thou and I this night maun gae. 
 
 _ . ___ 
 
 ^ See Dieterich, Nekyia, 89, 90, and especially Rohde, Psy. ii. 221, note. 
 
132 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 The three parts of the Divina Commedia correspond, in 
 the main, to the " Three Ways." The theological doctrine of 
 Purgatory, to which Dante gives such noble imaginative 
 expression, is alien to the Hebrew spirit, and came to the 
 Church mainly from the Platonic doctrine of κάθαρσις — 
 especially as the doctrine found expression in Eschatological 
 Myths reflecting Orphic teaching.^ 
 
 We come now to the Myth of Er (Hep. 614 A if.), the 
 greatest of Plato's Eschatological Myths, whether the fulness 
 of its matter or the splendour of its form be considered. 
 
 ^ See Thompson's note on Gorg. 525 b. 
 
THE MYTH OF EK IN THE REPUBLIC 
 
 Context 
 
 The subject of the Eepublic is Justice — that character in the 
 individual which manifests itself in the steady ^performance 
 of Duty — Duty being what a man does for the maintenance of 
 a certain Type of Social Life, the good of which he has been 
 educated to identify with his own good. 
 
 What, then, is this Type of Social Life, in living for which 
 a man does his Duty and finds his true Happiness t 
 
 The Eepublic is mainly concerned with the description of 
 it, and of the Education which fits men for it; and as the 
 Dialogue proceeds, the reader, who enters into the feelings of the 
 dramatis personae, becomes, with them, more and more con- 
 vinced that true Happiness, in this world, is to be found only 
 in the steady performance of Duty in and for a State ordered 
 according to the spirit, if not according to the letter, of the 
 Constitution described by Socrates. In this world, certainly, 
 the man who does his Duty, as Socrates defines it, ha>s his great 
 reward. He -is 729 times happier than the man who, despising 
 the law of Duty, has fallen under the tyranny of Pleasure. 
 
 But a greater reward awaits the Bighteous man, and 
 greater torments are prepared for the Unrighteous man, in the 
 world to come. For the Soul is immortal ; and an ontological 
 proof of its immortality is given. 
 
 Then, as though this proof were insufficient, the Eepublic 
 ends with the Myth of Er {told by Socrates), which proves, 
 indeed, nothing for the Understanding, but visualises, for the 
 Imagination, the hope of the Heart. 
 
 133 
 
134 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 BepuUic 613e-621d 
 
 ■^^A μεν τοίνυν, ην δ* εγώ, ζώνη τώ Βικαίφ ιταρα θεών 
 614 τ€ καΐ άνθρώττων αθΧά Τ6 καΐ μισθοί καΐ Βώρα fyiyverai, 
 ττρος εκβίνοις τοις ά^γαθοΐς οίς αύτη παρβί'χετο η Βικαω- 
 σύνη, TOtavT αν €Ϊη. Κ.αϊ μαλ\ εφη, καΧα Τ€ καϊ βέβαια. 
 Ύαΰτα τοίννν, ην δ εγώ, ovBev έστί ττΧηθβί ovBe με^εθβι 
 ττρος €Κ€Ϊνα, α τβλευτησαντα βκάτβρον ττεριμβνβί, 'χρη δ* αντα 
 άκονσαί, ϊνα τελέως ίκάτβρος αυτών άττειΧηφτι τα ύττο τον 
 \6yov οφειλόμενα άκοΰσαι. Λεγο^? αν, εφη, ώ? ου ττολλ,ά 
 
 Β αλλ' rjBtov άκούοντυ, Άλλ' ου μεντοι σοι, ην δ* εγώ, ^Α\κί- 
 νου γε airoXoyov ερώ, αλλ' όΧκίμου μεν ανΒρός, Ήρο? του 
 ^Αρμενίου, το γεϊ/ο? ΤΙαμφυΚον 6ς ττοτε εν ττοΧεμω τεΧευ- 
 τησας, άναιρεθεντων Βεκαταίων τών νεκρών ηΒη Βοεφθαρ- 
 μενων, υ^ιης μεν άνρρεθη, κομισθείς δ' οϊκαΒε μελΧων 
 θάτΓτεσθαί, ΒωΒεκαταΐος εττΐ ttj ττυρα κείμενος άνεβίω, 
 άναβίονς Β εXεyεv α εκεί ϊΒοι» εφη δε, εττειΒη ου εκβηναι 
 
 C την ψυχιίν, ττορεύεσθαί μετά ττοΧΧών, καϊ άφικνεΐσθαι σφας 
 εΙς τοΊΓον τίνα Βαιμόνιον, εν ω της τε yής Βύ είναι 'χ^άσματε 
 εγρμενω αΧΧηΧοιν καϊ του ουρανού αΰ εν τω άνω άΧΧα 
 καταντικρύ. Βικαστας δε μεταξύ τούτων καθήσθαι, ους, 
 εττειΒη ΒιαΒικάσειαν, τους μεν Βικαίους κεΧεύειν ττορεύεσθαί 
 την εΙς Βεξιάν τε καϊ άνω Βια του ουρανού, σημεία ττεριά- 
 ψαντας τών ΒεΒικασμενων εν τω ττρόσθεν, τους δε άΒίκους 
 την εΙς άριστεράν τε καϊ κάτω, εγρντας καϊ τούτους εν τω 
 
 D ΟΊΓίσθεν σημεία ττάντων ων εττραξαν. εαυτού Βε ιτροσεΧ- 
 θοντος είττεΐν, οτι Βεοι αύτον άyyεXov άνθρώττοις yεvεσθaι 
 
THE MYTH OF EE 135 
 
 Translation 
 
 " Of such sort, then, are the prizes and the wages and the 
 gifts which the just man receiveth, while he is yet alive, from 
 Gods and Men, over and above those good things whereof I 
 spake which Justice herself provideth." 
 
 " Yea, in truth goodly gifts," quoth he, " and exceeding 
 sure." 
 
 " Well," I said, " they are even as nothing, for number 
 and greatness, in comparison with those things which await 
 each of the two, to wit, the just man and the unjust man, 
 when he is dead. Of these thou must hear, that each of 
 them may have full payment of that which this Discourse 
 oweth him to be said concerning him." 
 
 " Say on," quoth he, " there is little else I would hear 
 more gladly." 
 
 " Nay," said I, " but it is not a Tale of Alcinous I will tell 
 thee, but the story of a mighty man, Er, the son of Armenius, 
 of the nation of the Pamphylians. 
 
 " It came to pass that he fell in battle ; and when the 
 corpses were taken up on the tenth day already stinking, he 
 was taken up sound ; and when they had carried him home 
 and were about to bury him, on the twelfth day, being laid 
 on the pyre, he came to life again ; and began to tell of the 
 things which he saw there. 
 
 " He said that when his Soul went out, it journeyed 
 together with a great company, and they came unto a certain 
 ghostly place wherein were two open Mouths of the Earth 
 hard by each other, and also above, two Mouths of the Heaven, 
 over against them : and Judges were seated between these, 
 who, when they had given their judgments, bade the righteous 
 take the road which leadeth to the right hand and up through 
 Heaven ; and they fastened tablets on them in front, signify- 
 ing the judgments ; but the unjust they sent by the road 
 which leadeth to the left hand and down, and they also had 
 tablets fastened on them behind, signifying all that they had 
 done. But when he himself came before the Judges they 
 said unto him that he must be for a messenger unto men con- 
 cerning the things thdl*e, and they charged him straitly that 
 
136 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 των €Κ€Ϊ καΐ Βιακβλξύοίντό οι άκονβιν re καΙ θεασθαι, 
 Ίτάντα τα iv τω τόττω. οράν Βη ravrrj μ€ν καθ βκάτερον 
 το χάσμα του ουρανού re καΐ τήζ 'γή<; άιηούσα^ τας 
 'ψ>υγα9, €7Γ€ίΒη αύταΐς Βικασθβίη, κατά Be τω ίτερω €Κ μβν 
 του avievai €Κ της yrj^ μβστας αύγ^μου re καΐ κονεως, έκ 
 Be του έτερου κaτaβaίveLv ετέρας €Κ του ουρανού καθαράς. 
 
 Ε καΐ τα<ζ ael άφίκνουμάνας coairep έκ ττοΧΧήζ 7Γορ€ίας 
 ^aiveaOaL ηκ€ίν, καΐ άσμίνας eh τον \eLμωva άτηουσας 
 οϊον iv '7Γavηyύpeί κατασκηνάσθαι, καϊ άσ'πάζeσΘaί re άΧΚη- 
 λα? οσαί ηνώριμαι^ και ΊΓυvθάveσθa^, τάς Τ€ €Κ της Ύης 
 ηκούσας τταρα των ίτέρων τα eKel καϊ τας €κ του ουρανού 
 τα Trap* eκeίvaίς. BLηyeΐσθac Be άΧληΧαις τας μ€ν 
 615 οΒυρομίνας Te καϊ κΧαούσας, άναμιμνησκο μίνας, οσα τ€ και 
 οΙα TraOoLev καϊ IBoLev iv Tjj ύττο ^ής iropeia — elvau Be 
 την TTopeiav 'χ^ιXίeτή — τάς δ* αΰ iK του ουρανού eύ'πaΘeίaς 
 Βιη'γεΐσθαί καϊ θέας άμη'χάνους το κάΧΧος» τα μέν ουν 
 ΤΓολλα, ω ΤΧαύκων, ττοΧΧοΰ 'χρόνου Βίηγήσασθαί' το Β 
 οΰν κ€φάΧαίον €φη ToBe elvai, οσα ττώττοτέ τίνα ηΒίκησαν 
 καϊ όσους €καστοι,, υττέρ άττάντων Βίκην BeBωκevaι. iv μepeL•, 
 υπέρ έκαστου BeκάκLς — τούτο δ' elvai κατά έκaτovτaeτη- 
 
 Β ρίΒα έκάστην, ως βίου οντος τοσούτου τού άνθρωττίνου — , 
 ϊνα Beκa^ΓXάσLov το €κτισμα τού άΒικηματος iKTivoiev καϊ 
 οϊτίν€ς ΤΓοΧΧών θανάτων ήσαν αϊτιοί, η ττόλει? 7ΓροΒ6ντ€ς η 
 aTpaToireBa καϊ eh BoυXeLaς iμβeβXηκότeς, η τίνος αΧΧης 
 κακουχίας μ€ταίτίοι, ττάντων τούτων Beκa^ΓXaσίaς άΧ^ηΒόνας 
 ύττέρ έκαστου κομίσαιντο, καϊ αύ el τινας eύepηeσίaς 
 eυepηeτηκoτeς καϊ Βίκαιοι καϊ όσιοι fγe<yov6τeς elev, κατά 
 
 C ταύτα την άξίαν κομίζοιντο. των Be €ύθύς <yevoμevωv καϊ 
 οΧίτγον χρονον βιούντων ττέρι αΧΧα eXeyev ουκ άξια μνήμης. 
 εΙς Be θeoύς άσeβelaς Te καϊ eύσeβeίaς καϊ γονέας καϊ 
 αύτο'χ€ΐρας ψονου μeίζoυς €Τί τους μισθούς Bιηyeΐτo. €φη 
 
THE MYTH OF EE 137 
 
 he should give diligence to hear and see all the things in the 
 place. 
 
 " Now, he told how that he beheld the Souls departing, some 
 by one of the Mouths of Heaven, and some by one'of the Mouths 
 of Earth, when judgment had been given unto them ; also 
 how that he beheld Souls returning by the other two Mouths, 
 some coming up from the Earth travel-stained, covered with 
 dust, and some coming down from Heaven, pure. And he said 
 that all, as they came, being come belike from a long journey, 
 turned aside with joy into the Meadow and encamped there 
 as in a Congregation ; and they that were acquaintances 
 greeted one another, and they questioned one another — they 
 that were come from the Earth questioned them that were 
 come from Heaven concerning the things there, and in like 
 manner they that were come from Heaven questioned the 
 others concerning the things that had happened unto them. 
 So they discoursed with one another — some of them groaning 
 and weeping when they called to mind all the terrible things 
 they had suffered and seen in their journey under the Earth 
 — he said that their journey was for a thousand years ; and 
 others of them, to wit, those which were come from Heaven, 
 telling of blessings and marvellous fair sights. 
 
 " Time would fail me, Glaucon, to relate all that he said, 
 but the sum thereof was this : — That according to the number 
 of the wrongs which each man hath ever done, and the number 
 of them whom he hath wronged, he payeth penalty for all in 
 their course, ten times for each : — now, it is every hundred 
 years that he payeth, for a hundred years are counted for the 
 lifetime of a man : so is it brought to pass that the price of 
 evil-doing is paid tenfold : thus if certain caused the death 
 of many by betraying cities or armies, and casting men into 
 bondage, or taking part of other iniquity, they are recom- 
 pensed tenfold with torments for each one of these things ; 
 but if any have done good unto other men, and have been 
 just and religious, they in the same measure receive their 
 rewards. Also concerning infants that died as soon as they 
 were born, or lived but a short while, there were things he 
 said that are not worth remembering. As for those who dis- 
 honoured Gods and Parents, and those who honoured them, 
 and as for those that wele murderers, he spake of their wages 
 
138 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 yap Βη τταρα^βν^σθαι βρωτωμβνω ίτβρω ύττο ίτέρον, οττου 
 6Ϊη ^ΑρΒίαΐος ό /ζ,εγα?. ο δε ^ΑρΒι,αΐο^; ουτο'ζ της ΤΙαμφυΧίας 
 €V TLVt iToXeL τύραννος iyeyovei, ηΒη γ^υΚιοστον €Τος €ΐς 
 6Κ€Ϊνον τον 'χ^ρόνον, yepovTa re ττατέρα άττοκτείνας καΐ 
 
 D ΤΓρβσβύτερον άΒβΧφόν, καΐ αλΧα Βη ττοΧΧά re καΐ ανόσια 
 βίρ^ασμενος, ως iXiyeTO. βφη ονν τον βρωτώμενον βίττείν, 
 ^Χ ήι^^ί) (pavaiy ουο αν ηξα oevpo. 
 
 εθβασάμβθα yap ονν Βη καϊ τούτο των Becvcov θεαμάτων. 
 €7Γ€ΐ,Βη 677U9 του στομίου ημεν μεΧΧοντες άνιεναι καϊ 
 ταΧΧα ττάντα 'ττεττονθότες, εκείνον τε κατείΒομεν εξαίφνης 
 καϊ άΧΧους σχ^εΒόν Tt αυτών τους ττΧείστους τυράννους* 
 ήσαν Βε καν ΙΒυώταί τίνες των μεyάXa ήμαρτηκότων ους 
 
 Ε οίομενους ηΒη άναβησεσθαυ ουκ εΒε'χετο το στόμιον, αλλ' 
 εμυκάτο, οττότε τις των ούτως άνιάτως ενόντων εΙς ττονηρίαν 
 η μη Ικανώς ΒεΒωκως Βίκην εττί'χείροΐ άνίεναι» ενταύθα Βη 
 άνΒρες, εφη, aypioCy Βίάττυροο ΙΒεΐν, τταρεστώτες καϊ κατά- 
 μανθάνοντες το φθεyμa, τους μεν ΒιαΧαβόντες rjyov, τον Be 
 ΑρΒίαΐον καϊ άΧΧους συμττοΒίσαντες 'χείρας τε καϊ ττοΒας 
 616 καϊ κεφαΧην, καταβαΧόντες καϊ εκΒείραντες, εΐΧκον τταρα 
 την οΒον έκτος εττ άστταΧάθων κνάτττοντες, καϊ τοΐς άεΐ 
 ιταριουσι σημαίνοντες, ων ενεκά τε ταύτα ύττομενοιεν ^ καϊ 
 OTL εις τον Ύάρταρον εμττεσούμενοί ayotvTo. ένθα Βη 
 φόβων, εφη, ΤΓοΧΧών καϊ τταντοΒαττών σφίσι yεyovότωv 
 τούτον ύττερβάΧΧειν τον φοβον, μη yivocTO εκάστω το 
 φθεyμa, οτε άναβαίνοι, καϊ άσμενεστατα εκαστον σiyησavτoς 
 άναβηναι. καϊ τας μεν Βη Βίκας τε καϊ τιμωρίας τοιαύτας 
 
 Β τινας είναι, καϊ αυ τας εύεpyεσίaς ταύταις αντίστροφους' 
 εττειΒη Βε τοΐς εν τω Χειμώνι εκάστοις ετττά ήμεραι 
 yivoivTo, άναστάντας εντεύθεν Βεΐν Tjj oyBorj ττορεύεσθαι, 
 καϊ άφικνεΐσθαι τεταρταίους όθεν καθοράν άνωθεν Βιά 
 τταντος του ουρανοί) καϊ yής τεταμενον φως ευθύ, οίον 
 κίονα, μάΧιστα τη ϊριΒι ητροσφερη, Χαμττρότερον Βε καϊ 
 καθαρώτερον. εις ο άφικεσθαι ττροεΧθόντας ήμερησίαν οΒόν, 
 
 C καϊ ιΒεΐν αυτόθι κατά μέσον το φως εκ του ουρανού τα 
 
 ^ ταύτα, ύττομένοίζν om. 
 
THE MYTH OF EE 139 
 
 as even greater ; for he said that he stood beside one of whom 
 another inquired, Where Ardiaeus the Great was. Now this 
 Ardiaeus had made himself King in a city of Pamphylia just a 
 thousand years before that time, having slain tlie old man his 
 father, and his elder brother, and having wrought many other 
 evil deeds, as men tell. He said, then, that the one of whom 
 inquiry was made answered saying, He is not come ; nor will 
 he ever come hither — for this, indeed, was one of the terrible 
 things that we beheld when we were nigh unto the Mouth, 
 and about to go up after all our sufferings ; on the sudden we 
 came in sight of him, and others, most of them kings, but 
 there were also private men of those that had sinned greatly 
 amongst them : these, thinking that they were already about 
 to go up, the Mouth received not, but bellowed ; for it 
 belloweth as often as any one of those that are wicked beyond 
 cure like unto these, or any one that hath not paid the full 
 price of his sins, essayeth to go up. In that place he said 
 men were standing by — savage men, as coals of fire to look 
 upon — who, hearing and understanding the Voice of the Mouth, 
 took hold of some in their arms and carried them away ; but 
 Ardiaeus and others they bound hand and foot and neck, and 
 threw down, and flayed, and dragged to a place apart by the 
 side of the way, and there carded them on thorns, signifying 
 to all that passed by wherefore they were taken, and that 
 they should be cast into Tartarus. Then, he said, there came 
 upon him and his companions a fear greater than all the fears 
 of every sort they had before ; for each one of them feared lest 
 the Voice should be for himself when he went up : and with 
 great joy did each one go up when the Voice kept silence. 
 
 " Of such kind, then, were the judgments and the punish- 
 ments ; and there were blessings that answered unto them. 
 
 " Now, when both companies had been seven days in the 
 Meadow, Er said that they were constrained, on the eighth 
 day, to arise and journey thence, and came on the fourth day 
 to a place whence they could behold a Straight Light ex- 
 tended from above through the whole Heaven and Earth, as 
 it were a pillar, for colour most like unto the rainbow, but 
 brighter and purer. Unto which they came when they had 
 gone forward a day's journey, and there, at the middle part of 
 the Light, beheld extended from the Heaven the ends of the 
 
UO THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 άκρα αυτόν των Ββσμών τεταμένα' elvai yap τούτο το φως 
 ξννΒεσμον τον ονρανον, οίον τα νττοζώματα των τριηρών, 
 οντω Ίτάσαν ξννέχ^ον την ττεριφοράν* εκ δε των άκρων 
 τεταμενον ^Ανά'γκη<; άτρακτον, Bt ον ττασα? ετη,στρεφεσθαί 
 τας ττεριφοράς' ον την μεν ήΧακάτην τε καϊ το ά^κιστρον 
 είναι εξ άΒάμαντος, τον Βε σφόνΒυΚον μικτον εκ τε τούτου 
 
 D καϊ αΧΚων ^ενών. την Βε τον σφονΒνΧον φνσιν είναι 
 τοιάνΒε• το μεν σγτιμα οίαττερ η τον ενθάΒε' νοήσαι Βε 
 Βεΐ εξ ων βλεγε τοιόνΒε αντον είναι, ωσττερ αν ει εν ενί 
 με^αλω σφονΒνΧω κοίΧω και εξε^λ,νμμενω Βιαμττερες αλλθ9 
 τοιοντος εΚάττων ε^κεοιτο άρμόττων, καθάττερ οι κάΒοι οι 
 εις άΧληΧονς άρμόττοντες' καϊ οντω Βη τρίτον αΧΚον και 
 τέταρτον και άΧλονς τέτταρας. οκτώ <yap είναι τοι>ς 
 ξνμτταντας σφονΒνΧονς, εν αΧΧηΧοις ε^γκειμενονς, κνκΧονς 
 
 Ε άνωθεν τα χείΧη φαίνοντας, νωτον σννεγες ενός σφονΒνΧον 
 άττερ^αζομενονς ττερι την ηΧακάτην εκείνην Βε Βιά μέσον 
 τον oyBoov Βιαμττερες εΧηΧάσθαι. τον μεν ονν ττρώτόν τε 
 καϊ εξωτάτω σφονΒνΧον ττΧατντατον τον τον χείΧους κύκΧον 
 εχειν, τον Βε τον έκτον Βεντερον, τρίτον Βε τον τον 
 τέταρτον, τέταρτον Βε τον τον oyBoov, ττεμτττον Βε τον τον 
 εβΒομον, έκτον Βε τον τον ττεμιττον, εβΒομον Βε τον τον 
 τρίτον, oyBoov Βε τον τον Βεντερον καϊ τον μεν τον 
 μεyίστov πτοικίΧον, τον Βε τον εβΒομον Χαμττρότατον, τον 
 617 δε τον oyBoov το χρώμα άττο τον εβΒομον εχειν ττροσ- 
 ΧάμτΓοντος, τον Βε τον Βεντερον καϊ ττεμιττον τταραττΧησια 
 άΧΧήΧοις, ξανθότερα εκείνων, τρίτον Βε Χενκότατον χρώμα 
 εχειν, τέταρτον Βε νττερνθρον, Βεντερον Βε Χενκότητι τον 
 έκτον ύττερβάΧΧειν. κνκΧεΐσθαι Βε Βη στρεφόμενον τον 
 άτρακτον οΧον μεν την αντην φοράν, εν Βε τω οΧω 
 ττεριφερομενω τονς μεν εντός ετττά κνκΧονς την εναντίαν 
 τω οΧω ήρεμα ττεριφερεσθαι, αντών Βε τούτων τάχιστα μεν 
 
 Β ιεναι τον oyBoov, Βεντερονς Βε καϊ άμα άΧΧήΧοις τον τε 
 εβΒομον καϊ έκτον καϊ ττεμτττον ' τον τρίτον Βε φορά ιεναι, 
 ως σφίσι φαίνεσθαι, εττανακυκΧούμενον τον τέταρτον 
 τέταρτον Βε τον τρίτον καϊ ττεμτττον τον Βεύτερον 
 στρεφεσθαι Βε αύτον εν τοις της ^Avάyκης y6vaσιv. εττϊ 
 Βε τών κύκΧων αύτον άνωθεν εφ' εκάστον βεβηκέναι 
 ζ,ειρήνα σνμττεριφερομενην, φωνην μίαν ίεΐσαν, ενα τόνον 
 εκ ττασών Βε οκτώ ονσών μίαν άρμονίαν ξνμφωνεΐν. άΧΧας 
 
THE MYTH OF EE 141 
 
 bonds thereof: for this Light is that which bindeth the 
 Heavens together; as the under-girths hold together ships 
 so doth it hold together the whole round of Heaven ; and 
 from the ends extendeth the Spindle of Necessity, which 
 causeth all the heavenly revolutions, whereof the shaft and 
 hook are of adamant, and the whorl is of adamant and of 
 other substances therewith. 
 
 " Now, the whorl is after this fashion. In shape it is as 
 one of our whorls, but from what he said we must conceive of 
 it as a great whorl, carved hollow through and through, where- 
 in is set, fitting it, a smaller whorl of like kind, as caskets are 
 set fitting into one another ; and then in this a third whorl is 
 set, and then a fourth, and then four others ; for the whorls 
 are together eight, set one within another, showing their lips 
 as circles above, and making thus the even continued outside 
 of one whorl round about the shaft ; and the shaft is driven 
 right through the middle of the eighth whorl. 
 
 " The first and outermost whorl hath the circle of its lip 
 the broadest ; the circle of the sixth is second for breadth ; 
 the circle of the fourth is third; the circle of the eighth is 
 fourth ; the circle of the seventh is fifth ; the circle of the 
 fifth is sixth ; the circle of the third is seventh ; the circle of 
 the second is eighth. And the circle of the greatest is of 
 many colours ; the circle of the seventh is brightest ; the 
 circle of the eighth hath its colour from the seventh which 
 shineth upon it ; the circles of the second and fifth are like 
 unto each other, being ruddier than the rest ; the third hath 
 the whitest colour ; the fourth is pale red ; and the sixth is 
 second for whiteness. 
 
 " The spindle turneth round wholly with one motion ; but 
 of the whole that turneth round the seven circles within turn 
 slowly contrary to the whole : and of these the eighth goeth 
 swiftest ; next, and together, go the seventh and the sixth and 
 the fifth ; third in swiftness goeth the fourth ; fourth, the 
 third ; and fifth, the second. 
 
 " And the whole spindle goeth round in the lap of Necessity. 
 
 " Aloft upon each of the circles of the spindle is mounted a 
 Siren ; which goeth round with her circle, uttering one note 
 at one pitch ; and the notes of all the eight together do make 
 one melody. 
 
142 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 C δέ καθημίνας ττέριξ Bo' ίσου τρβΐς, ev θρόνω βκάστην, 
 dvyarepa^ τής ^ΑναΎκης, Μοίρας, Χβυχ^είμονονσας, στέμματα 
 iirl των κβφαΧών έχ^ούσας, Κά'χβσίν Τ€ καϊ Κλω^ώ κα\ 
 "ΑτροΊΓον, νμνβΐν ττρος την των Χβίρηνων άρμονίαν, Αάγβσυν 
 μεν τα ηεηονότα, Κλω^ώ δε τα οντά, ^Άτροττον δε τα 
 μάΧλοντα. καϊ την μβν ΚΧωθω τη Ββξια χ<£ΐρΙ βφατττομενην 
 συνετηστρεφειν του ατράκτου την βξω ττεριφοράν, ΒιάΧεί- 
 τΓουσαν γ^ρόνον, την δε "Ατροττον τη αριστερά τας εντο<; 
 
 D αΰ ωσαύτως' την δε Αάγεσίν εν μέρει εκατερας εκατερα τη 
 χ€ίρΙ εφάΐΓτεσθαί. 
 
 σφάς ουν, εττειΒη άφικεσθαι, ευθύς Βεΐν Ιεναι ττρος την 
 Αάγεσιν. ττροφήτην ουν τίνα σφάς ττρώτον μεν εν τάξει 
 Βιαστήσαι, εττειτα Χαβόντα εκ των της Ααγεσεως ηονάτων 
 κΧηρους τε καϊ βίων ιταραΒεί^γματα, άναβάντα εττί τι βήμα 
 ύψηΧον είττεΐν ^Ανά<γκης θυ^ατρος κόρης Ααχεσεως Χό'^ος. 
 "^υχαΐ εφήμεροι, άρχτ) άΧΧης ττεριοΒου θνητού yεvoυς 
 
 Ε θανατηφόρου. ούχ υμάς Βαίμων Χηξεται, αλλ' ύμεΐς 
 Βαίμονα αίρησεσθε. ττρώτος δ' ο Χαγων ττρώτος αίρείσθω 
 βίον, ω συνεσται εξ ανάγκης. άρετη δε άΒεσττοτον, ην 
 τιμών καϊ άτιμάζων ττΧεον καϊ εΧαττον αυτής έκαστος εξει. 
 αίτια εΧομενου' θεός αναίτιος. Ταύτα είττόντα ρΐψαι εττϊ 
 ττάντας τους κΧηρους, τον δε τταρ* αύτον ττεσόντα εκαστον 
 άναιρεΐσθαι, ττΧην ου' ε δε ούκ εάν τω δε άνεΧομενω 
 618 δήλοι/ είναι, όττόστος είΧήγειν μετά Βε τούτο αύθις τα 
 των βίων τταραΒεί^ματα εις το ττροσθεν σφών θεΐναι εττϊ 
 την ^ήν, τΓοΧύ ττΧείω των τταρόντων. είναι δε τταντοΒαττά' 
 ζώων τε yap ττάντων βίους καϊ Βη και τους άνθρωττίνους 
 άτταντας. τυραννίΒας τε yap εν αύτοΐς είναι, τ ας μεν 
 ΒιατεΧεΐς, τας δε καϊ μεταξύ Βιαφθειρομενας και εις ττενίας 
 τε καϊ φυyaς καϊ εις τττωχείας τεΧευτώσας' είναι Βε καϊ 
 Βοκίμων άνΒρών βίους, τους μεν εττϊ εϊΒεσι καϊ κατά κάΧΧη *? 
 
THE MYTH OF EK 143 
 
 " Eound about are three others seated at equal distances 
 apart, each upon a throne : these be the Daughters of I^ecessity, 
 the Fates, Lachesis, and Clotho, and Atropos. They are 
 clothed in white raiment and have garlands on their heads ; 
 and they chant to the melody of the Sirens ; Lachesis chanteth 
 of the things that have been, and Clotho of the things that 
 are, and Atropos of the things that shall be : and Clotho with 
 her right hand ever and anon taketh hold of the outer round 
 of the spindle, and helpeth to turn it ; and Atropos with her 
 left hand doeth the same with the inner rounds ; and Lachesis 
 with either hand taketh hold of outer and inner alternately.^ 
 
 " Now he said that when they were come, it behoved them 
 straightway to go unto Lachesis. Wherefore a Prophet did 
 first marshal them in order ; and then having taken lots out 
 of the lap of Lachesis and Ensamples of Lives, went up into a 
 high pulpit and said : Thus saith Necessity's Daughter, Maid 
 Lachesis — Souls of a day, now beginneth another course of 
 earthly life which bringeth death. For you your Angels will 
 not cast lots, to get you, but each one of you shall choose his 
 Angel. Let him to whom falleth the first turn, first choose 
 the Life unto which he shall be bound of necessity. But 
 Virtue hath no master. As a man honoureth her and dis- 
 honoureth her, so shall he have more of her and less. He who 
 hath chosen shall answer for it. God is not answerable. 
 
 " Er said that when the Prophet had spoken these words, he 
 threw the lots unto all, and each took up the lot which fell 
 beside him, save only himself; for the Prophet suffered him 
 not. 
 
 " Now when each had taken up his lot, it was plain what 
 number he had gotten. Thereafter the Prophet laid on the 
 ground before them the Ensamples of Lives, far more than for 
 the persons there. Now these Ensamples were of all sorts: 
 there were Lives of all kinds of creatures, and moreover of all 
 conditions of men ; for there were kingships among them, 
 some that lasted for a whole lifetime, and some on the way 
 to downfall, and ending with poverty and flight and beggary. 
 Also there were Lives of men renowned, some of them for 
 
 ^ I.e., as Mr. Adam explains (note on 617 c, d), she lays hold of outer (the 
 circle of the Same) and inner (1j;ie circle of the Other) in turn, using her right 
 hand for the former, and her left for the latter. * 
 
144 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Β καΧ την άΧλην Ισγνν re καϊ αηωνίαν^ τους δ' €7γΙ ηενβσυ 
 καΐ Ίτροηόνων άρεταΐς, καϊ αδόκιμων κατά ταύτα, ωσαύτως 
 δε καΐ yvvaiKcov ψυχής δε τάξί,ν ουκ iveivaL Bca το 
 άνα^καίως εχε^ι/ αΚΚον ίλομύνην βίον άΧΚοίαν ηίην^σθαΐ' 
 τα δ' άλλα αΚΚ'ηΚοις τε και ττΧούτοις καϊ ττενίαι,ς, τα Sk 
 νόσοις, τα δε ύ^γίβίαις μβμΐχθαι,, τα Be καϊ μεσούν τούτων. 
 €νθα Βή, ώς eoLK€Vy ω φίΧε ΤΧαύκων, 6 ττάς κίνΒυνος 
 άνθρώττω, καϊ Bta ταύτα μάλιστα ίτΓΐμβΚητίον, οττως έκαστος 
 
 C ημών των αΧλων μαθημάτων άμελησας τούτου του μαθή- 
 ματος καϊ ζητητης καϊ μαθητής εσται, εάν ττοθεν οίος τ τ) 
 μαθεΐν καϊ εξευρεΐν, τις αύτον ττοιήσει Βυνατον καϊ 
 ετηστήμονα, βίον καϊ χρηστον καϊ ττονηρον Βια'^ΐ'^νώσκοντα 
 τον βεΧτίω εκ των Βυνατών άεϊ ττανταχρύ αιρείσθαι, 
 άνάλο<γιζ6μενον ττάντα τα νυν Βη ρηθεντα καϊ ξυντιθεμενα 
 άΧλήΧοις καϊ Βιαιρούμενα ττρος άρετην βίου ττώς έχει, καϊ 
 
 D εΙΒεναι, τί κάΧλος ττενία ή ττΧούτω κραθεν καϊ μετά ττοίας 
 τίνος ψυχής εξεως κακόν ή ά^αθον εpyάζετaι, καϊ τί 
 εύ^ενειαι καϊ Βυσ<γενειαι καϊ ΙΒιωτεΐαι καϊ άρχαϊ καϊ Ισχυες 
 καϊ άσθενειαι καϊ εύμαθίαι καϊ Βυσμαθίαι καϊ ττάντα τα 
 τοιαύτα των φύσει ττερϊ ψυχην όντων καϊ των επίκτητων 
 τί ξυ^κεραννύμενα ττρος άΧληΧα εργάζεται, ώστε εξ άττάντων 
 αυτών Βυνατον είναι συΧΧο^ισάμενον αίρεΐσθαι, ττρος την 
 της ψυχής φύσιν άτΓοβΧεττοντα, τον τε χείρω καϊ τον 
 
 Ε άμείνω βίον, χείρω μεν καΧούντα, ος αύτην εκεΐσε άξει, εις 
 το άΒικωτεραν ^Ιτ^νεσθαι, άμείνω δε όστις εις το Βικαιοτεραν, 
 τά δε άΧΧα ττάντα χαίρειν εάν εωράκαμεν yap, οτι ζώντί 
 τε καϊ τεΧευτήσαντι αύτη κρατίστη αίρεσις, άΒαμαντίνως 
 619 δ^ Βεΐ ταύτην την Βόξαν έχοντα εις ^ΆιΒου Ιεναι, οττως αν 
 η καϊ εκεί άνεκττΧηκτος ύττο ττΧούτων τε καϊ των τοιούτων 
 κακών, καϊ μη εμττεσων εις τυραννίΒας καϊ άΧΧας τοιαύτας 
 ττράξεις ττοΧΧά μεν εpyάσητaι καϊ ανήκεστα κακά, ετι δε 
 αύτος μείζω ττάθη, αλλά yvo) τον μέσον άεϊ τών τοιούτων 
 βίον αίρεΐσθαι καϊ φεύyειv τά ύττερβάΧΧοντα εκατερωσε κσ,ϊ 
 
THE MYTH OF ER U5 
 
 comeliness and beauty, or for strength and prowess, some for 
 birth and the virtues of their forefathers ; likewise also there 
 were Lives of men of no such renown. There were also Lives 
 of women. But conditions of the Soul were not amongst the 
 Ensamples ; the reason whereof is this, that a Soul which hath 
 chosen a certain Life is of necessity changed accordingly ; but 
 all other things both good and evil were there mixed together 
 — riches and poverty, and health and disease, and also states 
 between these. 
 
 " There, methinks, dear Glaucon, is man's great peril 
 Wherefore let each one of us give heed to this chiefly, how 
 that, taking no thought for the knowledge of other things, he 
 shall seek after the knowledge of one thing, if peradventure 
 he may learn and find out who it is that shall make him able 
 and wise, so that he may discern the good Life from the evil, 
 and, according to his ability, alway and everywhere choose 
 the better Life, and reckoning how all the things that have 
 been now said, both taken together and severally, concern the 
 Virtuous Life, may understand what good or evil, for what 
 state of the Soul, beauty joined with poverty or riches worketh, 
 and what good or evil noble birth, and base birth, and private 
 station, and rule in the city, and strength, and weakness, and 
 quickness of wit, and slowness, and the other native qualities 
 of the Soul like unto these, and the qualities which the Soul 
 acquireth, do work, according as they are mixed variously with 
 one another ; to the end that, having taken count of all these, 
 he may be able to choose, having regard to the nature of his 
 Soul, between the worse and the better Life, calling that the 
 worse which will lead his Soul to become more unrighteous, 
 and calling that the better which will lead it to become more 
 righteous. All else will he let go by ; for we have seen and 
 know that this is the best choice for a man, both whilst he 
 liveth and when he is dead. With this doctrine, then, as hard 
 as adamant within him, must he go unto Hades, so that there 
 also he may not be amazed at riches and such like trumpery, 
 and may not fall into the Life of a tyrant or of some other 
 such evil-doer, and work iniquities many and without all 
 remedy, and himself suffer still worse things ; but rather may 
 discern to choose alway the Life between such states, and 
 eschew the extremes on eil;her hand, both in this Life, as far 
 
 L 
 
146 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 €v τώδε τω βίω κατά το Βυνατον καΐ iv τταντϊ τω eiretTa' 
 
 Β οντω yap εύΒαιμονύστατος yLyveTai άνθρω7Γ0<ζ, 
 
 καϊ Βη ονν κα\ τότε 6 εκβΐθβν άγγελος rjyyeWe τον 
 μεν ττροφήτην οΰτως είττεΐν, καϊ τεΚευταίω εττωντί, ξύν νω 
 εΧομενω, συντόνων ζώντί κείται, βίος άγατττ/το?, ου κακός, 
 μήτε ό αρ'χων αίρεσεως άμεΧεΙτω μήτε 6 τεΧευτών 
 αθυμείτω. είττόντος Βε ταύτα τον πρώτον Χαγόντα εφη 
 ενθνς ετΓίόντα την με^ίστην τνραννίΒα εΧεσθαί, καϊ υττο 
 αφροσύνης τε καϊ Χαιμαρ^ίας ου ττάντα Ικανως άνασκεψά- 
 
 C μενον εΧεσθαι, αλλ* αύτον ΧαθεΙν ενοΰσαν είμαρμενην, 
 τταίΒων αύτον βρώσεις καϊ άΧΧα κακά* εττειΒη Βε κατά 
 σ'χοΧην σκεψασθαί, κότττεσθαί τε καϊ οΒύρεσθαι την 
 αΐρεσίν, ουκ εμμένοντα τοις ττρορρηθεΐσίν νττο τον προ- 
 φήτου* ου yap εαυτόν αΐτίάσθαι, των κακών, -άΧΧα τύ'χτ^ν 
 τε καϊ Βαίμονας καϊ ττάντα μάΧΧον άνθ^ εαυτού. είναι Βε 
 αύτον των εκ του ουρανού ηκόντων, εν τετayμεvr} ττοΧίτεία 
 εν τω ττροτερω βίω βεβιωκότα, εθεί άνευ φίΧοσοφίας αρετής 
 
 D μετείΧηφοτα. ως Βε καϊ είττείν, ούκ εΧάττους είναι εν τοΐς 
 τοιούτους άΧυσκομενους τους εκ του ουρανού ήκοντας, άτε 
 ττόνων άyυμvάστoυς• των δ' εκ της γης τους ττοΧΧούς, άτε 
 αυτούς τε ττεττονηκότας άΧΧους τε εωρακότας, ούκ εξ 
 εΐΓίΒρομής τάς αΙρεσεις ττοίεΐσθαι. Βώ Βη καϊ μεταβοΧην 
 των κακών καϊ τών άyaθώv ταΐς ττοΧΧαϊς τών ψυχρών 
 yίyvεσθaL καϊ Βοά την του κΧηρου τύγτ^ν εττεϊ εϊ τις αεί, 
 
 Ε ΟΊΓΟτε εις τον ενθάΒε βίον άφικνοΐτο, ύyίώς φιΧοσοφοΙ καϊ 
 ο κΧήρος αύτω της αίρεσεως μη εν τεΧευταίοις Ίτίτττοι, 
 κίνΒυνεύει εκ τών εκείθεν ά7ΓayyεXXoμεvωv ού μόνον ενθάΒε 
 εύΒαίμονεΐν άν, άΧΧά καϊ την ενθενΒε εκεΐσε καϊ Βεύρο 
 ΊτάΧιν τΓορειαν ούκ άν γθονίαν καϊ τραγεΐαν ττορεύεσθαι, 
 άλλα λεί.αΐ' τε καϊ ούρανίαν. ταύτην yap Βη, εφη, την 
 θεαν άξιαν είναι ΙΒεΙν, ως εκασται αϊ ψυ^αϊ τιρονντο τους 
 620 βίους • εΧεεινήν τε yap ιΒεΐν είναι καϊ yεXoίav καϊ θαυμα- 
 σίαν. κατά συνηθειαν yap του ττροτερου βίου τά ττοΧΧά 
 αίρεΐσθαι. ιΒεΐν μεν yap Λ^υχ^ζ/ εφη την ττοτε ^Ορφεως 
 
THE MYTH OF EK U7 
 
 as he is able, and in all the Life hereafter : for in this lieth 
 man's chief happiness. 
 
 " Now the Messenger who brought this Tale from that place 
 went on and said that the Prophet then spake thus : — Even 
 for him whose turn cometh last, if he hath chosen with under- 
 standing, there is prepared a Life, which, if only a man bear 
 himself manfully, is tolerable, not wretched. Neither let him 
 who cometh first be careless of his choice ; nor let him who 
 cometh at the end be downcast. 
 
 " He said that when the Prophet had spoken these words, 
 the one that had gotten the first place, as soon as he came 
 forward, chose the greatest kingship there ; and by reason of 
 folly and greediness looked not well enough into all before he 
 chose it, and marked not that therein it was appointed of Fate 
 that he should eat his own children, and that other evils should 
 befall him. When therefore he had looked at it at leisure, he 
 began to beat his breast and bewail his choice, not abiding by 
 the commandment of the Prophet ; for he did not blame him- 
 self for these evils, but Ill-Luck, and Gods, and any thing 
 rather than himself. Now, he was of them that were come 
 from Heaven, having spent his former life in a well-ordered 
 city, and become virtuous through Custom without True 
 Knowledge : they that were come from Heaven were not the 
 least part, belike, of them that were caught thus ; for they 
 had not been exercised with labours ; but most part of those 
 from under the Earth, inasmuch as they themselves had 
 endured labours, and had seen others enduring, made not 
 their choice hastily. For this cause, as well as through the 
 luck of the lot, a change of good and of evil befalleth most 
 part of the Souls ; for if any man, whenever he cometh into 
 this life, seek alway with his whole heart after wisdom, and 
 if the lot so fall that he is not of the last to choose, there is 
 good hope, from what the Messenger said, not only that he 
 will have happiness here, but also that the journey hence to 
 that place and back again hither will not be under the ground 
 and rough, but smooth and heavenly. 
 
 " Truly it was a sight worth looking at, he said, to see how 
 the Souls severally chose their lives — yea, a pitiful sight, and 
 a laughable, and a wonderful ; inasmuch as they chose mostly 
 after the custom of their former life ; for he told how he saw 
 
148 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ^€νομ€νην κύκνου βίον αίρουμβνην, μίσβί του ^γυναικείου 
 γένους Βια τον υττ εκείνων θάνατον ουκ εθεΧουσαν iv 
 yvvaiKl ^γεννηθείσαν γενέσθαι* ΙΒεΐν 8ε την %αμύρου άηΒόνος 
 εΧομενην ί8εΐν Βε καϊ κύκνον μεταβάλΧοντα εΙς άνθρωττίνου 
 
 Β βίου αϊρεσίν, καΧ άΧΧα ζώα μουσικά ωσαύτως. είκοστην 
 Βε Χα'χρυσαν ψυγην εΧεσθαι Χεοντος βίον είναι Βε την 
 Αϊαντο<; του ΎεΧαμωνίου, φεύ^ουσαν άνθρωττον ηενεσθαι^ 
 μεμνημενην της των οττΧων κρίσεως. την δ' εττΐ τούτω 
 Ay αμεμνονος* ε'χθρα Βε καϊ ταύτην του άνθρωττίνου γένους 
 Βιά τα ττάθη άετου ΒιαΧΧάξαι βίον. εν μεσοις Βε Χαγουσαν 
 την ^ΑταΧάντης ψυχ^ην, κατιΒουσαν με^άΧας τιμάς άθΧητοΰ 
 άνΒρος, ου Βύνασθαι τταρεΧθεΐν^ άΧΧά Χαβεΐν. μετά Βε 
 
 C ταύτην ΙΒεΐν την Έττε^οΟ του ΤΙανοττεως εις τε'χνικης 
 γυναικός Ιουσαν φύσιν ττόρρω Β* εν ύστάτοις ιΒεΐν την 
 του ^γεΧωτοτΓΟίοΰ ©ερσίτου ττίθηκον ενΒυομενην κατά τύγτ)ν 
 Βε την ^ΟΒυσσεως, Χα'χρυσαν ττασών ύστάτην, αίρησομενην 
 ιεναί' μνημτ) Βε των προτέρων ττόνων φιΧοτιμίας ΧεΧωφη- 
 κυΐαν ξητεΐν ττεριϊοΰσαν χρόνον ττοΧύν βίον άνΒρος ΙΒιώτου 
 άτΓ pay μονός, καϊ μο^ις εύρεΐν κείμενόν ττου καϊ τταρημεΧημενον 
 
 D ύτΓΟ των άΧΧων, καϊ είττεΐν ΙΒουσαν, οτι τά αυτά αν ειτραξε 
 καϊ πρώτη Χαχοΰσα, καϊ άσμενην εΧεσθαι, καϊ εκ των άΧΧων 
 Βη θηρίων ωσαύτως εις ανθρώπους Ιεναι καϊ εις άΧΧηΧα, 
 τά μεν άΒικα εΙς τά aypia, τά Βε Βίκαια εις τά ήμερα 
 μεταβάΧΧοντα, καϊ πάσας μίξεις μί^γνυσθαι. επειΒη δ* οΰν 
 πάσας τάς 'ψυγάς τους βίους ηρήσθαι, ώσπερ εΧαγον, εν 
 τάξει προσ ιεναι προς την Αάγεσιν εκείνην δ' εκάστω ον 
 
 Ε ε'ιΧετο Βαίμονα, τούτον φύΧακα ξυμπεμπειν του βίου καϊ 
 άποπΧηρωτην των αίρεθεντων. ον πρώτον μεν άηειν αύτην 
 προς την Κλω^ώ υπο την εκείνης χεΙρά τε καϊ επιστροφην 
 της του ατράκτου Βίνης, κυροϋντα ην Χαγων εΐΧετο μοΐραν* 
 ταύτης δ* εφαψάμενον αύθις επϊ την της ^Ατρόπου ά^ειν 
 νήσιν, άμετάστροφα τά επικΧωσθεντα ποιουντα• εντεύθεν 
 
THE MYTH OF EK 149 
 
 the Soul that had been Orpheus's choosing a swan's Life, 
 for that, hating womankind because women murdered him, it 
 would not be born of a woman. Also he said that he saw the 
 Soul of Thamyras when it had chosen the life of a nightingale ; 
 and that he saw also a swan changing, and choosing the life of 
 a man, and other musical creatures doing likewise. And the 
 Soul which got the twentieth place chose the life of a lion : 
 this was the Soul of Ajax, the son of Telamon, which eschewed 
 becoming a man because it remembered the Judgment concern- 
 ing the Arms. Next came the Soul of Agamemnon ; which 
 also, out of enmity towards mankind because that it went evil 
 with him, took in exchange the life of an eagle. The Soul of 
 Atalanta, which had gotten her place between the first and the 
 last, perceiving the great honour which belongeth to the life of 
 a man who contendeth at the Games, was not able to pass by 
 but took it. After her he saw the Soul of Epeius, the son of 
 Panopeus, passing into the nature of a spinster ; and amongst 
 the last he saw the Soul of Thersites the jester putting on an 
 ape. Also it chanced that the Soul of Odysseus, which had 
 gotten the last place of all, came forward to choose, and having 
 abated all her ambition because she remembered her former 
 labours, went about seeking for a long while, and after much 
 ado, found the life of a quiet private man lying somewhere 
 despised of the others, and when she saw it said — ' Had I 
 come first I would have done the same ; ' and took it with 
 great joy. 
 
 " Beasts likewise were changed into men and into one 
 another, the unjust into those that were savage, and the just 
 into those that were tame : yea in everywise were they mixed 
 together. 
 
 " Now when all the Souls had chosen their lives according 
 to the place allotted unto each, they went forward, in order, 
 unto Lachesis; and she sent the Angel, which each one had 
 chosen, with him, to be the guardian of his life and to fulfil 
 the things that he had chosen; and the Angel, bringing him 
 first unto Clotho, taketh him beneath her hand and the 
 revolution of the whirling spindle, and ratifieth the Portion 
 which the man had chosen in his turn ; then, from her 
 presence, the Angel brought him unto Atropos where she 
 span ; so did he make th5 threads of the man's life unalterable. 
 
150 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 621 δε Βη άμ€ταστρ€7Γτϊ iiiro τον τή<ζ ^Ανά^γκης ievai θρόνον, 
 καΐ Be εκείνου Βιβξβλθόντα, εττειΒη καϊ οι άΧλοι ΒιήΧθον, 
 ΤΓορεύβσθαί άτταντας βίς το τή<ζ Αηθης ττβΒίον Βία καύματος 
 Τ6 καϊ TTvlyovi Beivov* καϊ yap elvai αυτό Kevov ΒβνΒρων 
 τ€ καϊ οσα yrj φύει. σκηνασθαι ουν σφάς ήΒη εσττίρα^ζ 
 yiyvoμkv'η<ζ τταρα τον ^Αμελητα ττοταμον, ου το νΒωρ 
 άyyεΐov ούΒεν στεyεcv. μετρον μεν ουν tl του ΰΒατος 
 Ίτασι,ν avayKalov είναι ττιεΐν^ τους Βε φρονήσει, μη σωζομε- 
 
 Β νους ΊτΚεον ττίνείν του μετρον τον Βε άεΐ ττιόντα ττάντων 
 ετΓίΚανθάνεσθαί. εττειΒη Βε κοίμηθηναι καϊ μεσας νύκτας 
 yεvεσθaLy βροντην τε καϊ σεισμον yεvεσθaly καϊ εντεύθεν 
 εξαττίνης αλΧον αλλτ; φέρεσθαι άνω εΙς την yεvεσLv, άτ- 
 τοντας ωσττερ αστέρας, αύτος Βε του μεν ΰΒατος κωΧυθήναι 
 ΤΓίεΐν οΐΓΎ} μεντοι καϊ οττως εΙς το σώμα άφίκοίτο, ουκ 
 εΙΒεναι, άλ\' εξαίφνης άναβΧεψας ΙΒεΐν εωθεν αυτόν 
 κείμενον εττΐ ττ} ττυρα. ΚαΙ οΰτως, ω ΤΧαύκων, μύθος 
 
 C εσώθη καϊ ουκ άττώΧετο, καϊ ημάς αν σώσειεν, αν ττειθώ- 
 μεθα αύτω, καϊ τον της Αήθης ττοταμον ευ Βιαβησόμεθα 
 καϊ την ψυχ^ην ου μιανθησόμεθα' αλλ* αν εμοϊ ττειθώμεθα, 
 νομίζοντες άθάνατον ψυχ^ην καϊ Βυνατην πτάντα μεν κακά 
 άνεγεσθαι, ττάντα Βε aya0a, της άνω οΒού άεϊ εξόμεθα καϊ 
 Βίκαιοσύνην μετά φρονησεως τταντϊ τρόττω εττιτηΒεύσομεν, 
 ίνα καϊ ήμΐν αύτοΐς φίλοι ωμεν καϊ τοΙς θεοίς, αυτού τε 
 
 D μένοντες ενθάΒε, καϊ εττειΒάν τα άθλα αυτής κομιζώμεθα, 
 ωσττερ οΐ νικηφόροι 7Γεpιayειp6μεvoι, καϊ ενθάΒε καϊ εν Τ'β 
 γ^ΐΚιετεΐ ΊΓορεία, ην ΒιεΧηΧνθαμεν, εν ττράττωμεν. 
 
THE MYTH OF ER 151 
 
 " Thence, Er said, each man, without turning back, went 
 straight on under the throne of Necessity, and when each, 
 even unto the last, was come out through it, they all together 
 journeyed to the Plain of Lethe, through terrible burning heat 
 and frost; and this Plain is without trees or any herb that 
 the earth bringeth forth. 
 
 " He said that they encamped, when it was already evening, 
 beside the River of Forge tfulness, the water whereof no pitcher 
 holdeth. Now, it was necessary that all should drink a certain 
 measure of the water ; but they that were not preserved by 
 wisdom drank more than the measure ; and as each man drank, 
 he forgot all. Then he said that when they had fallen asleep 
 and midnight was come, there was thunder and an earthquake, 
 and of a sudden they flew up thence unto divers parts to be 
 born in the flesh, shooting like meteors. But he himself was 
 not suffered to drink of the water: yet by what means and 
 how he came unto his body he knew not; but suddenly he 
 opened his eyes, and lo ! it was morning, and he was lying on 
 the pyre. 
 
 " Thus, Glaucon, was the Tale preserved from perishing, 
 and it will preserve us if we believe in it ; so shall we pass 
 over the River of Lethe safely, and keep our Souls undefiled. 
 
 " This is my counsel : let us believe that the Soul is 
 immortal, and able to bear all ill and all good, and let us 
 always keep to the upward way, and practise justice in all 
 things with understanding, that we may be friends both with 
 ourselves and with the Gods, both whilst we sojourn here, and 
 when we receive the prizes of our justice, like unto Conquerors 
 at the Games which go about gathering their wages ; and that 
 both here, and in the journey of a thousand years of which I 
 told, we may fare welL" 
 
152 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Observations on the Myth of Er 
 
 Let us begin with the geography and cosmography of the 
 Myth. 
 
 The Meadow of the Judgment-seat, between the two open- 
 ings of Tartarus (in and out) on the one side, and the two 
 corresponding openings of Heaven on the other side, is also 
 the meeting-place of the Souls which return from their 
 thousand years' sojourn in Tartarus and Heaven. From the 
 Meadow they journey, always above ground, till they come to 
 a " rainbow-coloured light, straight like a pillar, extended 
 from on high throughout the Heaven and the Earth." This 
 Light is the axis, I take it, on which the whole heavenly 
 system revolves, the Earth fixed in the centre of the system 
 being a globe on the line of the axis. The destination of the 
 Pilgrim Souls is that part of the surface of the globe at 
 which, in the hemisphere where they are, the axis enters on 
 its imaginary course through the centre of the Earth, in order 
 to come out again at the antipodal point in the other hemi- 
 sphere. The Souls, arrived at the very point where, in the 
 hemisphere where they are, the axis of the Cosmos enters the 
 Earth, are in the place of all places where the Law which 
 controls all things is intuitively plain — they see the Pillar 
 of Light as the Spindle of Necessity. Then, suddenly, the 
 outlook presented to us in the Myth changes like the scene 
 in a dream. It is no longer such a view of the Cosmos from 
 within as we had, a moment ago, while we stood with the 
 Pilgrims on the surface of the Earth, looking up at the Pillar 
 of Light in the sky : we are now looking at the Cosmos from 
 the outside, as if it were an orrery — a model of concentric 
 cups or rings ; and Necessity herself is holding the model in 
 her lap, and the three Fates are seated round, and keep turn- 
 ing the eight cups, on each of which, on its edge, a Siren is 
 mounted who sings in tune with her sisters. But the Pilgrim 
 Souls are standing near, looking on at this spectacle. They 
 are on their way, we know, from the Meadow to the Plain of 
 Lethe, both places on the surface of the Earth : it is on the 
 
THE MYTH OF ER 153 
 
 Earth then, after all, that the throne is placed on which 
 Necessity sits holding in her lap the model, which, like a 
 true dream-thing, is both a little model and the great Cosmos 
 itself.^ In this place, in the presence of Necessity on her 
 throne, the Pilgrim Souls are addressed by the Prophet from 
 his pulpit ; then choose, in the turns which the lots determine, 
 lives of men or beasts scattered, it would seem, as little 
 images at their feet ; ^ then go before the three Fates, who 
 
 ^ Let me illustrate this characteristic of the "dream-thing" from the Dream 
 in the Fifth Book of Wordsworth's Prelude : — 
 
 On poetry and geometric truth, 
 
 And their high privilege of lasting life, 
 
 From all internal injury exempt, 
 
 I mused ; upon these chiefly : and at length, 
 
 My senses yielding to the sultry air, 
 
 Sleep seized me, and I passed into a dream. 
 
 I saw before me stretched a boundless plain 
 
 Of sandy wilderness, all black and void. 
 
 And as I looked around, distress and fear 
 
 Came creeping over me, when at my side, 
 
 Close at my side, an uncouth shape appeared 
 
 Upon a dromedary, mounted high. 
 
 He seemed an Arab of the Bedouin tribes : 
 
 A lance he bore, and underneath one arm 
 
 A stone, and in the opposite hand a shell 
 
 Of a surpassing brightness. . . . 
 
 ****** 
 
 . . . The Arab told me that the stone 
 Was "Euclid's Elements " ; and "This," said he, 
 *' Is something of more worth " ; and at the word 
 Stretched forth the shell, so beautiful in shape, 
 In colour so resplendent, with command 
 That I should hold it to my ear. I did so, 
 And heard that instant in an unknown tongue, 
 Which yet I understood, articulate sounds, 
 A loud prophetic blast of harmony ; 
 An Ode, in passion uttered. . . . 
 ****** 
 
 While this was uttering, strange as it may seem, 
 
 I wondered not, although I plainly saw 
 
 The one to be a stone, the other a shell ; 
 
 Nor doubted once but that they both were books, 
 
 Having a perfect faith in all that passed. 
 
 2 I think that Plato may have borrowed his τα των βίων τταραδεί-γματα here from 
 votive images of trades and callings, and of animals : "The Argive Heraeum," 
 says Mr. Rouse {Greek Votive Offeriiigs, p. 298), "yielded hundreds of animals 
 in bronze and clay : bulls, cows, oxen and oxherds, goats, sheep, cocks, ducks, 
 and other birds, including perhaps a swan." These animals (to which may be 
 added horses, pigs, doves), were, Mr. Rouse supposes, either sacrificial victims 
 or first-fruits of hunting. Referring to human figures he says, p. 79, " It is at 
 least probable that a successful huntsman, artist, craftsman, trader, would 
 dedicate a figure, in character, as a thank-offering for success in his calling." If 
 I remember rightly, a little fignfe, recognised as that of a " Philosopher," was 
 discovered in the tomb of " Aristotle " found near Chalcis some years ago. 
 
154 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ratify the chosen doom of each; then pass severally under 
 the throne of Necessity ; and thence travel together, through 
 a hot dusty region, till they come to the Plain of Lethe, 
 where no green thing grows, and to the Eiver the water of 
 which no pitcher can hold. When the Souls have drunk of 
 this water — the foolish, too much — they fall asleep ; but at 
 midnight there is an earthquake and thunder, and suddenly, 
 like meteors, they shoot up to be born again, in terrestrial 
 bodies, in our part of the Earth. 
 
 The account given by Plato here is strictly in accordance 
 with the popular belief, which makes Lethe a river entirely 
 above ground, never counts it among the rivers of Tartarus.^ 
 Virgil, in Aen. vi. 705, 714, may be thought to place it under 
 ground ; but his description suffers in clearness from com- 
 pression ; and it is not likely that he willingly deserts 
 traditional authority in a matter of such importance as the 
 position of Lethe. His veKma, as a whole, is derived from a 
 source (considered by Eohde and Dieterich to be the κατάβασις 
 eh AKBov) common to himself with Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, 
 Lucian, and (according to Dieterich, though here Eohde does 
 not agree with him) ^ the writers of certain sepulchral inscrip- 
 tions which I shall describe in the next section ; and where 
 Lethe appears in any of these authors, it never, I believe, 
 appears as one of the infernal, or subterranean, rivers. 
 Indeed, all reasonable doubt as to Virgil's orthodoxy seems to 
 be barred by his statement that the plain in which Souls 
 about to be born again are gathered together near the banks 
 of Lethe has its own sun (Ae7i. vi. 641). It is evidently 
 above ground somewhere — the writer of the Axiochus would 
 perhaps say in the antipodal hemisphere of the Earth. 
 
 IP 
 
 The object of this section is to point to a detail — the 
 twin-streams, Εηηοέ and Lethe, of the Earthly Paradise {Purg. 
 xxviii.) — in which Dante's vision of Purgatory reproduces — I 
 
 ^ See Thiemann, Platonische Eschatologie, p. 18. 
 
 2 Dieterich, Nek. 128 f., 135, and Rohde, Psy. ii. 217. 
 
 ^ It ought to be mentioned that this section was written, and the substance 
 of it read in the course of a public lecture, and also to a private society, before 
 the appearance of Miss Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 
 and her " Query " in The Classical Review, Feb. 1903, p. 58. 
 
THE MYTH OF EE 155 
 
 think, independently — a distinctive feature of that Orphic 
 ritual and mythology to which Plato is largely indebted for 
 his account of the Soul's κάθαρσις as a process of forgetting 
 and remembering — as a series of transmigrations through 
 which the particulars of sense, the evils and sins of the flesh, 
 are forgotten or left behind, and the universal Ideas, long ob- 
 scured, are, at last, so clearly remembered that they can never 
 be forgotten any more, but become the everlasting possession 
 of the Soul, finally disembodied and returned to its own star. 
 
 It is easy to account, from the literary sources open to 
 Dante, for the presence of rivers, and more particularly of 
 Lethe, in his Earthly Paradise. On the one hand, the descrip- 
 tion of Eden in Genesis would suggest the general idea of 
 rivers girding the Earthly Paradise ; ^ while, on the other 
 hand, the proximity of Purgatory to the Earthly Paradise 
 makes it natural that Lethe should be one of these rivers — 
 that first reached by one coming up from Purgatory. The 
 drinking of Lethe, according to Aen. vi. and the current 
 mythology, is the act with which a period of purgatorial 
 discipline is closed by those Souls which are about to pass 
 again into the flesh. In placing the Earthly Paradise on the 
 top of a lofty mountain Dante followed a prevalent medieval 
 beHef; and, although he seems to have drawn on his own 
 imagination in placing Purgatory on the slopes of this 
 mountain, it was natural, and in accordance with the current 
 mythology, that he should place it there, close to the Earthly 
 Paradise or Elysium ; for the Lethe of Aen. vi. is evidently in 
 the same region as Elysium, — 
 
 Interea videt Aeneas in valle reducta 
 Secliisum nemus et virgulta sonantia sylvis, 
 Lethaeumque domos placidas qui praenatat amnem.2 
 
 The presence, then, of Lethe, the purgatorial stream, in 
 Dante's Earthly Paradise is easily accounted for by reference 
 to the mythological authorities open to him. But for the 
 association of Εηηοέ, the stream of Memory, with Lethe, the 
 stream of Eorgetfulness, it does not seem possible to account 
 in this way. The common mythology gives Lethe alone. It 
 
 1 See Vernon's Headings on the Purgatorio, ii. 285-293. Lethe girds the 
 Earthly Paradise on the side o| Earth, Eunoe on the side of Heaven. 
 
 2 Virg. Aen. vi. 703. 
 
166 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 is not likely that Dante had heard of the twin streams — Lethe 
 and Mnemosyne — of the Orphic cult ; at any rate, in the 
 absence of evidence that he had heard of them, it seems better 
 to suppose that the very natural picture of a stream of Memory 
 beside the stream of Forgetfulness occurred to him spon- 
 taneously, as it had occurred to others, who, like himself, were 
 deeply concerned to find expression for their hope of κάθαρσης. 
 For the twin streams of the Orphic cult which resemble 
 Dante's Lethe and Eunoe so closely, we must turn to the 
 sepulchral inscriptions mentioned at the end of the last 
 section. These are certain directions for the ghostly journey 
 to be made by initiated persons, written in hexameter verse 
 on gold tablets found in graves at Thurii and Petelia in 
 South Italy, and now preserved in the British Museum. 
 These tablets were described by Comparetti in the Journal 
 of Hellenic Studies, iii. p. Ill if., and are printed by Kaibel 
 in his Insc. Gr. Sic. et It p. 157. Kaibel assigns them to 
 the third or fourth century B.C. I shall quote the one that 
 was found at Petelia.^ It gives directions to an initiated 
 person who hopes to get out of the Cycle of Incarnations — 
 κύκΚου τ αν Χήξαί, καϊ άναττνενσαί κακότητοζ^ — having been 
 completely purified. Such a person, the verses say, must 
 avoid the fountain on the left hand with a white cypress 
 growing near it, evidently the water of Lethe, although the 
 tablet does not name it. It is to the right that the purified 
 Soul of the μύστης must turn, to the cool water of Mnemosyne. 
 The guardians of the well he must address in set form of words, 
 thus — " I am the child of Earth and Heaven : I am parched 
 with thirst ; I perish ; give me cool water to drink from the 
 well of Memory." And the guardians will give him water 
 to drink from the holy well, and he will be translated to 
 dwell for ever with the Heroes : — 
 
 €νρήσ•€ί<ζ δ' Άΐ8αο δόμων ίττ' aplcrrepa κρήνην, 
 τταρ* δ' avTy λ^νκην €σ-τηκνΐαν κνττάρισσ-ον. 
 ταντη^ rrjs κρήνης μηδί σ•)(€δον Ι/χττελάσεια?• 
 
 1 For further description of the Petelia Tablet (in the Brit. Museum, Gold 
 Ornament Room, Table-case H) and other Orphic golden tablets {e.g. the 
 Eleuthernae Tablet from Crete, in the National Museum, Athens), the reader 
 may consult Miss Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 
 pp. 573 if., with Appendix by Mr. G. G. A. Murray, pp. 660 ff. 
 
 ^ See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 800. 
 
THE MYTH OF EE 157 
 
 €νρήσ€ί<ζ δ* €Τ€/3αν τψ μνημοσύνης άπο λίμνης 
 xj/v^^pov ν8ωρ προρίον φνλακ€ς 8' ζττίττροσθζν eacriv. 
 ctTTCtv yrjs παΐς ζ'ίμΙ καΐ ονρανον άστ€/οο€ντο?, 
 ανταρ €μοΙ yivos ονράνιον τοδ€ δ' Γστ€ και αντοί' 
 SiypYj δ' €ΐμΙ ανη καΐ άττόλλνμαι, άλλα δότ* α?^α 
 \}/νχρον ν8ωρ Trpopkov της μνημοσύνης άττο λίμνης' 
 καν[τοί (ro]t δώσουσι Trtetv θζίης άπ[ο κρήν'Ιης, 
 καΐ τότ €7Γ€ΐτ* ά[λλοισι μ^Θ'^ ηρώ^σσιν ava^€t[s]. 
 
 The Myth of Er indeed differs from the Petelia Tablet in 
 being concerned with those who must still drink of Lethe, 
 and be bom again in the flesh, not with those who have 
 been thoroughly purified and drink of Mnemosyne, and so 
 enter into the eternal peace of the disembodied state; yet 
 there is a touch in the Platonic Myth which reminds us that 
 the journey taken is the same as that which the Orphic 
 μύστης; had to take with the golden tablet in his hand. The 
 journey to the plain of Lethe, according to the Platonic. Myth, 
 is through a dry, torrid region, and the temptation to drink 
 too deeply of the water of Lethe is strong, and wisdom, in 
 the imperfectly purified Soul, is needed in order to resist it. 
 Similarly, the purified μύστης is warned by his tablet not 
 to quench his burning thirst in Lethe, for the cool water 
 of Mnemosyne is at hand. The drinking of Lethe is the 
 act with which each successive period of the purgatorial 
 discipline ends ; the drinking of Mnemosyne is the act 
 which completes the whole series of periods in the discipline. 
 Both streams, or fountains, are in the place — above ground, 
 not subterranean — to which Souls journey in order that from 
 it they may be either translated to the True Heaven, or sent 
 back to be born again in this world. Similarly Dante places 
 these two streams side by side on the top of the Mount of 
 Purgatory, Lethe running west and north on the left hand of 
 one standing on the south side of their common source and 
 looking north ; Eunoe running east and north on his right 
 hand. Dante, not having to set forth his doctrine of 
 κάθαρσις in the form of a myth of metempsychosis, makes 
 the purified Soul, before it passes from the Mount of 
 Purgatory up into Heaven, drink only once of Lethe, at 
 the completion of all its purgatorial stages, in order that it 
 may forget its sins ; and then of Eunoe, that it may retain 
 the memory of its meritorious deeds (Fur ρ. xxviii. 130). 
 
158 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Sins are wiped out after penance, and so fully pardoned, that 
 the sinner does not even remember that he has sinned ; but, 
 on the other hand, he does not begin his heavenly existence 
 as a tabula rasa — the continuity of his conscious life is pre- 
 served by the memory he retains of his good actions. Here 
 Dante sets forth the thought on which the Platonic doctrine 
 of άνάμνησίς rests. It is the flesh, with its sins, that the 
 Philosopher in the Fhaedrus forgets; but of the things of 
 , the mind — of truth and virtue — he gains always clearer and 
 clearer memory, working out his purification as a devotee of 
 the true " mysteries " — μόνη τττβροϋταί ή του φιΚοσόφου 
 Sidvota' ττρος yap βκβίνοις αεί βστι μνημΎ) κατά Βυναμ^ν, 
 Ίτρος οΙστΓβρ θεοζ ων θβΐός έστί• τοΐς 8e 8η τοίοντοί<ζ άνηρ 
 υττομνημασιν ορθώς 'χρώμβνος, reXeou? ael τελβτας τεΧούμβνος, 
 τύΧβος όντως μόνος yljveTaL• (Phaedrus, 249 c). The parallel 
 between the philosopher who "always, as far as he can, 
 cleaves in memory to those things by cleaving to which the 
 Deity is divine," ^ and the purified μύστης who finally drinks 
 of the well of μνημοσύνη, is plainly in Plato's mind here, as 
 Dieterich {Nekyia, pp. 113, 122) and others have noticed.^ 
 Similarly, in the Phaedo, 114 c, he says ol φιλοσοφία ικανώς 
 καθηράμβνοί avev σωμάτων ζώσο, speaking of those who are 
 translated from the Earthly to the Celestial Paradise, i.e. 
 from the True Surface of the Earth, or the Islands of the 
 Blessed, to οΙκησεις eTi τούτων καΧλίονς. 
 
 ^ See Thompson's note on the construction irpos έκάνοί$. 
 
 2 Dieterich {Nek. p. 122) says: " Platons Mythen stiminen in allem, was 
 die erhaltenen Reste zu kontroliren uns gestatten, zu den Tafelchen von Thurioi 
 und Petelia : in diesen und in jenen der himmlisohe Ursprung der Seeleu, der 
 schmerzen voile Kreislauf, das Abbtissen der Schuld wegen alter Siinden, das 
 Eingehen in die Gefilde der Seligkeit (Persephone tritt allerdings bei Platon 
 ganzlich zariick) ; zur Rechten gehen wie in Platons Republik so nach deu 
 Inschriften die zu Belohnenden und zur Linke die Strafenden, links ist die 
 Lethe in beiden Uberlieferungen. Sollten wir nun nicht die Anspielungen bei 
 Platon verstehen von der μνήμη der seligen Philosophen-seelen, irpbs yap iKeivois 
 aei έστι μνημι^ {Phaid. 249 c), und unmittelbar daneben die Bezeichnung der 
 Lehre als rAeot reXerat ? Es ist dasselbe, wenn von Pythagoras gesagt wird, er 
 sei immer in Besitz der μνήμη gewesen (s. bes. Laert. Diog. viii. 4). Dort ist 
 nur abstrakt gesagt, was der Quell der Mneme konkret, mythisch, und 
 syrabolisch sein soil. Die Wiedererinnerung an das, was die Seele einst sah 
 in ihrer gottlichen Heiniat, hilft sie erlosen ; wer sie euipfangt, ist erlost. 
 Sollte es noch zu kiihn sein, in jeuer ofFenbar viel iilteren Vorstellung der 
 unteritalischen Mysterien, die nun fur uns erst uni Platons Zeit oder etwas 
 spater durch diese Tafelchen ans Licht treten, eine Quelle der platonischen 
 Lehre von der άνάμνησίί zu finden ? Das kann hier nur angedeutet werden, 
 sonst wiirde sich herausstellen, dass diese Mysterienlehre iiberhaupt von viel 
 grbsserem Einflusse auf die ganze Psychologie, ja die ganze Ideenlehre gewesen 
 sind, als man hatte annehmen konnen." 
 
THE MYTH OF EK 159 
 
 I may perhaps be allowed to notice here, in passing, a 
 curious point of contact between Plato's representation of 
 κάθαρσις as effected through a series of metempsychoses, and 
 Dante's representation of it as an ascent from terrace to 
 terrace of the Mount of Purgatory. In the Myth of Er 
 Plato says that the Souls come to Lethe in the evening, and 
 drink of the water, and fall asleep ; and at midnight there 
 is thunder and an earthquake, and they shoot up like meteors 
 to be born again in the flesh. Similarly, Dante tells us 
 {Furg. XX. and xxi.) that when a Soul passes to a higher 
 terrace in the course of its purification, the Mount of Purgatory 
 is shaken, and there is a great shout of the spirits praising 
 God. The Soul of the poet Statins, which had just passed 
 to a higher terrace, thus explains the matter to Dante (Purg. 
 xxi. 58 £f.) : — The Mountain, it says, 
 
 Trembles when any spirit feels itself 
 So purified, that it may rise, or move 
 For rising ; and such loud acclaim ensues. 
 ***** 
 
 And I, who in this punishment had lain 
 
 Five hundred years and more, but now have felt 
 
 Free wish for happier clime. Therefore thou felt'st 
 
 The mountain tremble ; and the spirits devout 
 
 Heard'st, over all its limits, utter praise 
 
 To the Liege Lord, whom I entreat their joy 
 
 To hasten.^ 
 
 The earthquake and sound of shouting which attended the 
 passage of the Soul of Statins to a higher terrace are com- 
 pared with the shaking of Delos when Latona "couched to 
 bring forth the twin-born Eyes of Heaven," and with " the 
 song first heard in Bethlehem's field." An earthquake and 
 a great sound — of thunder or shouting — are thus associated 
 both by Plato and by Dante with the new birth. The ascent 
 of Souls from terrace to terrace of the Mount of Purgatory 
 is a series of spiritual new births, and answers in Dante to 
 the series of re-incarnations in Plato's mythological representa- 
 tion of the doctrine of κάθαρσις. 
 
 That the Orphic mythology of the two fountains of Lethe 
 and Mnemosyne in the world of the departed — vouched for 
 
 ^ Purg. xxi. 58 fF., Gary's Translation. 
 
160 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 by the gold tablet — originated in ritual practised by those who 
 consulted oracles of the dead, is rendered probable by a 
 passage in Pausanias ix. 39 (which Dante cannot be supposed 
 to have known), in which the method of consulting Tro- 
 phonius at Lebadeia is described. The priests of Trophonius, 
 before they take the applicant to the μαντβΐον, lead him to 
 certain fountains, Lethe and Mnemosyne, which are very close 
 to each other — at Be Ιηηύτατά eiaiv άΧΚηλων. First, he 
 must drink of Lethe that he may forget all that he thought 
 of before; then he must drink of Mnemosyne that he may 
 have power given him to remember what he sees when he 
 goes down into the Cave of Trophonius. There is evidently 
 a connection between the mythology of the Descent into 
 Hades and the practice of consulting oracles of the dead like 
 that of Trophonius. It is to consult his father Anchises that 
 Aeneas goes down into Avernus ; and even the inmates of 
 Dante's Inferno (for instance, Farinata, Inf. x.) have prophetic 
 power. 
 
 To summarise the results so far reached : — Dante was true 
 to mythological data at his disposal in placing Lethe in, or 
 near, Elysium or the Earthly Paradise, and making it a 
 stream, not subterranean, but on the surface of the Earth ; 
 but there is no evidence to show that he had any knowledge 
 of the Orphic mythology of the twin-streams as we have it 
 in the Petelia inscription. ISior can we suppose that he knew 
 of Pausanias' (ix. 39) mention of the streams of Lethe and 
 Mnemosyne at the entrance of the Cave of Trophonius.^ The 
 safest course is to allow that Dante, taking the general idea 
 of streams encircling the Earthly Paradise from Genesis, and 
 the idea of Lethe as one of these streams from Aen. vi., may 
 have hit, quite independently of mythological tradition, on the 
 very natural idea of a stream of Memory to contrast with the 
 stream of Oblivion, although his description of the attributes 
 of Eunoe as stream of Memory certainly resembles Platonic 
 and Neo-Platonic passages in which the process of κάθαρσις 
 is identified with that of άνάμνησις, 
 
 1 It is possible that he may have seen Pliny, JT. N". xxxi. 15. For Dante's 
 acquaintance with Pliny, see Toynbee's Dante Dictionary, art. " Plinius," and his 
 Index of Authors quoted by Benvenuto da Imola in his Commentary on the D. C, 
 published as Annual Report of the Dante Society (Cambridge, Mass.), 1900, 
 art. "Plinius." 
 
THE MYTH OF EK 161 
 
 With regard to the name Ευηοέ (not a name obviously 
 appropriate to the stream of Memory) I have a suggestion 
 to make, which, if it goes in the right direction at all, 
 perhaps does not go very far. I offer it, however, for what 
 it may be worth, as a contribution to a difi&cult subject. My 
 suggestion is that Dante's use of the name Εηηοέ may have 
 some connection with the idea of refrigerium, which apparently 
 found its way into Christian literature ^ from the early Chris- 
 tian epitaphs which reproduce the ψνχρον νΒωρ of the pagan 
 epitaphs. Thus, we have such pagan epitaphs as the follow- 
 ing published by Kaibel, and referred to by Dieterich in his 
 Nekyia and Eohde in his Psyche : ψυχρον νΒωρ 8οίη σοι 
 άναξ βνβρων Άέδωι/εύ? (Kaibel, /. G., 1842) — βνψνχ^εί καΐ 
 Βοίη σοι 6 "Οσιρις το ψνχ^ρον νΒωρ (Kaibel, /. G., 1488) — 
 D.M. IVLIA POLITICE DOESE OSIRIS TO PSYCRON 
 HYDOR (inscription found in Via Nomentana, Rome ; Kaibel, 
 /. G., 1705; cf. Dieterich, JVek p. 95); and such Christian 
 epitaphs (quoted by Dieterich, JVek. p. 95, and Rohde, Psyche, 
 ii. 391) as i7i refrigerio et pace anima tua — Deus te refrigeret 
 — spiritum tuum Dominus refrigeret. 
 
 I suggest, then, that the name Eunoe — evvota, henevolentia 
 — was chosen by Dante, or rather by an unknown authority 
 from whom he borrowed it, to indicate that a boon was 
 graciously bestowed by God through the water of this stream 
 — the boon of refrigerium — ψνχρον νΒωρ Βοίη σοι άναξ 
 βνέρων ΆϊΒωνενς — Dominus te refrigeret. Dante's Εηηοέ 
 would thus mean the Stream of the Loving-kindness and 
 Grace of God. 
 
 Considering the probable descent of the Christian re- 
 frigerium (the idea of which makes itself felt in the lines 
 with which the Purgatorio ends), through epitaphs, from the 
 Orphic ψνχρον νΒωρ, I am inclined to think that it is to 
 Christian epitaphs that we ought to go for the more 
 immediate source of Dante's Eunoe. If the word were found 
 there in connection with refrigerium, we might infer with 
 some confidence that it had occurred in Orphic epitaphs.^ 
 
 1 Tertullian, Apologeticus, xxxix., speaking of the Lord's Supper, says, "inopes- 
 quosque refrigerio isto juvamus" ; and Dante, Par. xiv. 27, has **Lo refrigerio 
 deir eterna ploia." 
 
 In the "Query" in the Classical Review, Feb. 1903, p. 58, referred to on 
 p. 154 supra, Miss Harrison coi^'ectured Έ{ύν]οία$ in Kaibel, I. G.S.I. 642. In 
 a note on "The Source of Dante's Εηηοέ" in the Classical Review, March 1903, 
 
 Μ 
 
162 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 III 
 
 Dante's Mount of Purgatory has characteristics belonging 
 to the Islands of the Blessed, or mansions eVl 7779, to the 
 Plain of Lethe, and to Tartarus, as these places are described 
 in Plato's Myths. The Earthly Paradise on the aethereal top 
 of the Mount of Purgatory answers to the mansions eVl γης 
 — " on the True Surface of the Earth." Lethe, as well as 
 Eunoe, is on the top of the Mount of Purgatory; and the 
 disciplinary punishment undergone by those not incorrigibly 
 wicked, in Plato's Tartarus, answers in part to the penance 
 undergone on the various cornices or terraces of Dante's 
 Purgatory. Looking at the composition of the Myth of Er as 
 a whole, we may say that in this Myth we have the sketch 
 of a Divina Commedia, complete with its three parts — Inferno, 
 Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is painted with a few 
 touches, where the torments of Ardiaeus are described. The 
 Purgatorio is given in more detail, not only in the reference 
 to what those who come out of Tartarus have suffered during 
 their imprisonment, but also in the account of the march of 
 these Souls to the throne of Necessity, and their choosing of 
 new Lives, and further journey on to the water of Lethe : 
 
 pp. 117, 118, in reply to Miss Harrison's "Query," I wrote: — "Until Miss 
 Harrison's E[w]otas has been proved to belong to the original text of Kaibel, 
 I.G.S.I. 642, and the reference in that inscription has been shown to belong 
 certainly, to the Orphic Κρήνη Μνημοσύνης, it will be enough to admit that an 
 Orphic writer in the third century B.C. might very naturally speak of the 
 φύλακ€ί of the ΛΥβΙΙ of Memory as edvoL towards those μύσται on whom they 
 bestowed rb ψνχρον ϋδωρ, or refrigerium, and that he might very naturally 
 describe that well itself as Evvoias κρήνη — the Fountain of Loving-kindness." 
 
 Since writing the above I have been reminded by a reference in Dieterich's 
 Mne Mithrasliturgie (1903), p. 74, n. 1, that Plutarch, in his Is. et Osir. eh. 47, 
 says that the Persian god Ormuzd made six gods, the first of whom is the God of 
 eCvoLa — ό μ€ν Ώρομά^η$ έκ του καθαρωτάτου φάους ό δ' Άρειμάνως έκ του ζόφου 
 Ύ^-γονώς τΓολεμοΰσίν άλλήλοις• καΐ ό μέν €ξ θεούς έττοίησβ, τόν μέν πρώτον ζύνοία$ 
 τόν δέ δεύτερον αληθείας, τόν δέ τρίτον ευνομίας, των δέ λοίττών τόν μέν σοφίας, 
 τόν δέ πλούτου, τόν δέ των έπΙ τοις καλοΐς ηδέων δημωυρΎόν ό δέ τούτους 
 ώσπερ άντι,τέχνους 'ίσους τόν αριθμόν. Here, Ι take it, τόν μέν πρώτον is the 
 first counted from Ormuzd himself ; so that the God of εϋνοια would be the last 
 reached by the ascending Soul of the initiated person on its way up the Mithraic 
 κλΐμαξ έπτάπυλος. It is a strange coincidence that the last stage in Dante's 
 κλΐμαξ of purification — the Mount of Purgatory — should also be Εϋνοια, having 
 passed which his μύστης is 
 
 Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle. 
 
 Miss Harrison {Prolegomena, p. 584) refers to tomb-inscriptions with εύνοιας 
 καΐ μνήμης χάριν. This only means, I take it, "in affectionate remembrance," 
 and can hardly give the clue to the problem of Dante's Eunoe = Mnemosyne. 
 
THE MYTH OF EK 163 
 
 these experiences, leading up, as they do, to yeveai^ in the 
 flesh, are all parts of a purgatorial discipline. Lastly, we have 
 the Paradiso of the Myth of Er in the vision of the orrery — 
 the little model of the great Universe, by means of which the 
 astronomical theory of Plato's age — essentially the same as 
 that of Dante's age — is illustrated and presented in a form 
 which appeals to poetical fancy, and yet — so Plato thought — 
 is scientifically correct. This ancient astronomy, first poetised 
 by Plato, has indeed played a notable part in the history of 
 poetry. Dante's Paradiso is dominated by it — renders it into 
 poetry, and yet leaves it "scientific"; and Milton, although he 
 was acquainted with the Copernican system, adheres, in 
 Paradise Lost, to the old astronomy with its concentric 
 spheres revolving round the Earth.^ But when we say that 
 Dante's Paradiso — the noblest of all Eschatological Myths — is 
 dominated by the ancient astronomy, — renders its theory of 
 the heavens into poetry and still leaves it " scientific," — we 
 must not forget that the theory came down to Dante already 
 touched into poetry by an influence not commonly considered 
 poetical, to which, however, Dante's rendering owes much of 
 its poetical effect. I refer to the influence of Aristotle. He 
 put poetry into astronomy when he explained the revolutions 
 of the spheres as actuated by the attraction of God — the Best 
 Beloved, Who draws all things unto Himself with strong 
 desire (see Met. A 7 ; de Coelo, ii. 2 ; and Mr. A. J. Butler's 
 note, The Paradise of Dante, p. 8). It is Aristotle who 
 dictates the first line of the Paradiso — 
 
 La gloria di Colui che tutto muove ; ^ 
 
 and it is with Aristotle's doctrine — or poetry — that the 
 Paradiso ends — 
 
 Air alta fantasia qui manco possa : 
 Ma gia volgeva il mio disiro e Ί velle, 
 Si come ruota che igualmente e mossa, 
 
 L' Amor clae muove il Sole e Γ altre stelle.^ 
 
 1 See Masson's Milton's Poetical Works, vol. i. pp. 89 flf. 
 2 His glory by whose might all things are moved. 
 
 Caby. 
 ^ Here vigour failed the towering fantasy ; 
 But yet the will rolled onward, like a wheel 
 In even motion, by the Love impelled 
 That moves tlfc Sun in Heaven and all the Stars. 
 
 Cary. 
 
164 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 The Aristotelian doctrine — or poetry ^ — of these lines is set 
 forth fully in the Convivio, ii. 44 : 
 
 There are nine moving heavens, and the order of their position 
 is as follows : The first that is reckoned is that of the Moon ; the 
 second, that in which Mercury is; the third, Venus ; the fourth, the 
 Sun ; the fifth. Mars ; the sixth, Jupiter ; the seventh, Saturn ; 
 the eighth is that of the Stars ; the ninth is that which can only 
 be perceived by the movement above mentioned, which is called 
 the crystalline or diaphanous, or wholly transparent. But outside 
 of these. Catholics suppose the Empyrean Heaven, which is as much 
 as to say the Heaven of Flame, or the luminous ; and they suppose 
 this to be immovable, since it has, in itself, in respect of every 
 part, that which its matter requires. And this is the reason why 
 the primum mobile has most rapid movement : because by reason of 
 the fervent longing which every part of it has to be joined to 
 every part of that most divine motionless Heaven, it revolves 
 within that with so great desire that its velocity is, as it were, 
 incomprehensible. And this motionless and peaceful Heaven is 
 the place of that Supreme Deity which alone fully beholds itself. 
 This is the place of the blessed spirits, according as Holy Church, 
 which cannot lie, will have it ; and this Aristotle, to whoso under- 
 stands him aright, seems to mean, in the first book de Coelo} 
 
 This is μνθος — as truly μύθος as the Spindle of Necessity 
 in the Vision of Er ; which Dante sufficiently recognises in 
 Conv. ii. 3, where he says that although, as regards the truth 
 of these things, little can be known, yet that little which 
 human reason can know has more delectation than all the 
 certainties of sense. 
 
 To pass now to another point : — The νώτον, or continuous 
 surface formed by the edges or lips of the concentric whorls 
 of the orrery (Bep. 616 e), has been identified by some with 
 the νωτον του ουρανοί) of Fhaedrus, 247 C — the outside of 
 the outermost sphere of the sensible Cosmos, on which the 
 Chariot-Souls emerge in sight of the Super-sensible Forms. 
 Hence, it is inferred, the place where the Souls of the Myth of 
 Er are assembled before the throne of Necessity, and where 
 they choose new Lives before they journey on to the Plain of 
 
 1 Against the view here advanced — that Aristotle's doctrine of God is " poetry " 
 — the reader may consult an interesting article on "The Conception oi ένέρτ^ΐΐα 
 ακινησία^," \)j Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, in Mivd, Oct. 1900, republished in revised and 
 expanded form, under the title of Activity and Substance, as Essay xii. in Mr. 
 Schiller's Humanism (1903). 
 
 2 A. J. Butler's Translation of Scartazzini's Companion to Dante, p. 420. 
 
THE MYTH OF ER 165 
 
 Lethe, is outside the sensible Cosmos.^ I do not think that 
 this inference is certain, or even probable. It is a model of 
 the Cosmos, I think — and an old-fashioned model, with rings 
 instead of spheres ^ — not the outside of the actual Cosmos, that 
 the Pilgrim Souls of the Bepuhlic see. In the vision of this 
 model, or orrery, we have what is really a vision within the 
 larger vision of the whole Myth of Er. The Pilgrim Souls 
 are still somewhere in the sensible Cosmos — indeed, they are 
 on the surface of the Earth somewhere. In this place, on the 
 surface of the Earth, Necessity and the three Fates, and the 
 rest of the pageant, appear to them, iv βΙΒωλον ecBeo, as the 
 Saints appear to Dante in the lower Spheres where they 
 really are not.^ Standing in this place, on the surface of the 
 Earth — it may be on» the antipodal surface of the Earth — the 
 Pilgrim Souls see on the knees of Necessity the model of the 
 Cosmos, with the lips of its rings making a continuous surface. 
 It is true that in the Phaedrus Souls about to be born actually 
 visit the νωτον ουρανού, and see thence the νττερονράνιος 
 τότΓος, but in the Phaedrus these Souls have wings and can 
 fly to the flammantia moenia mundi, whereas, in the Myth of 
 Er the Souls plod on foot. This seems to me to make a great 
 difference. In interpreting the details of a Platonic Myth we 
 do well always to take account of the poet-philosopher's power 
 of exact visualisation, in respect of which he can be compared 
 only with Dante. I think, therefore, that in the Myth of 
 
 ^ See R. L. Nettleship's Philosophical Lectures and Remains, ii. 361, n. 3. 
 
 2 Rep. 616 D : see Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, p. 202, and §78 generally. 
 Σφόνδυλοι, Prof. Burnet points out, are not spheres, but rings, what Parmenides 
 (adopting a Pythagorean idea) calls στέψαναι. According to the a0oi'5uXoi-scheme, 
 the Earth and the Heavens are not spherical, but annular. As the astronomy 
 accepted by Plato undoubtedly made the Earth spherical, in a spherical Cosmos 
 (see ZeWer's Plato, Eng. Transl. p. 379), we must conclude that the system of rings 
 or σφόνδύλοι, in Rep. 616, is that of a model only — either an old-fashioned 
 Pythagorean one, or an up-to-date one, in which, however, only the half of 
 each sphere was represented, so that the internal "works " might be seen. That 
 astronomical models were in use we know from Timaeus, 40 d, where the speaker 
 says that without the aid of a model of the Heavens it would be useless to attempt 
 to describe certain motions ; and cf. Fabricii Bihl. Or. Liber iv. pp. 457 ff., on 
 astronomical models in antiquity. 
 
 With regard to the breadth of the rims of the σφόνδνλοι, see Mr. Adam's note 
 on 616 E, and Appendix vi. Although the view supported by the πρότερα 
 καΐ αρχαιότερα 'γραφ-ή mentioned by Proclus — that the breadth of the rims of the 
 σφόνδνλοι is proportionate, but not equal, to the diameters of the planets — is 
 plausible, it seems better to take it that the supposed distances of the orbits from 
 each other are signified by the breadth of the rims. 
 
 3 Par. iv. 34 ff. Cf. 0dijs9 xi. 600, τόν δέ μ€τ είσενόησα βίην Έρακληείην 
 Ι €Ϊδώ\ον, αύτό$ δέ μ€τ άθανάτοισι θ^οΐσι. 
 
i66 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Er the Souls about to be born again do not actually visit the 
 νωτον ουρανού. 
 
 Be this as it may, the region of the νωτον ουρανού, as 
 described in the Fhaedrus, is either the actual abode, or in 
 close touch with the stars (Tim. 42 b), which are the actual 
 abodes, of the purified ones who have drunk of Mnemosyne, and 
 "always remember" — "philosophers," who have been trans- 
 lated from the " True Surface of the Earth," as we read in the 
 Pliaedo (114 c): ol φιλοσοφία ίκανως καθηράμενοο ανβυ re 
 σωμάτων ζώσι το τταράτταν eh τον eireiTa 'χ^ρονον και eZ? 
 οίκησβί^ €Τί τούτων καΧλίους άφικνουνται «9 οΰτβ ράΒίον 
 8ηλωσαί οΰτβ 6 'χρόνος Ικανός iv τω τταρόντί. The abode of 
 these purified ones, in or within sight of the super-sensible region, 
 corresponds to the Empyrean or motionless Heaven of Dante, 
 the tenth and outermost Heaven, in which the blessed really 
 dwell, although they appear, iv βΙΒώλου eiBei,, in all the nine 
 moving Spheres to the poet as he ascends.^ 
 
 I wish to conclude this section of my observations on the 
 Myth of Er with a few words about the view maintained by 
 Mr. Adam in his note on Hep. 617 b, 11 : — 
 
 *Ανάγκηζ γόνασιν. — Plato means us to imagine Necessity as 
 seated in the centre of the Universe. The notion is probably 
 Pythagorean ; for Parmenides, who attaches himself to the Pytha- 
 goreans in this part of his system (Zeller,•^ i. p. 572), speaks of a 
 central 'Ανάγκη as the cause of all movement and birth; see 
 Diels, ΌΟΧ. Gr. 335. 12 if. — των δέ σνμμι-γων (sc. στ€φανων) την 
 μζααιτατην άττασαι^ τοκ€α ττάσ-ης κινήσεως καΐ γενεσεω? νττάργΐΐν^ 
 rjvTLva καΙ Βαίμονα κνβερνηην καί KXrj8ov)(^ov επονόμαζα 8ίκην καΙ 
 ανάγκην; and Zeller, I.e. p. 577, η. 3 (Zeller identifies this 
 'Ανάγκη with the central fire of the Pythagoreans). The same 
 school seem also to have held that 'Ανάγκη surrounds and holds 
 the world together (Diels, I.e. 321), and Zeller thinks it is this 
 external 'Ανάγκη of which Plato here avails himself (I.e. p. 434, 
 n. 3). But it is quite clear that Plato's 'Ανάγκη is in the middle. 
 
 I agree with Mr. Adam in rejecting Zeller's view that it is 
 the external Άι/αγΛ:?; of which Plato here avails himself, and 
 in thinking that Plato's ^AvajKy is in the middle. But in 
 
 ^ Par. iv. 28-39. The appearance of a certain Saint in a certain moving 
 Sphere is a sign of his or her position in the graded hierarchy of the Empyrean, 
 or Unmoved Heaven, in which all the Saints have their real abode. A Saint who 
 appears to Dante in the Lunar Sphere, for example, has a lower position in the 
 Empyrean than one who appears in the Sphere of Jupiter. 
 
THE MYTH OF EK 167 
 
 what middle ? Not in the Pythagorean middle of the Universe, 
 which is not the Earth, but the Central Fire. The throne of 
 "Ανάγκη is certainly placed by Plato either on or within the 
 Earth, which is in the middle of his Universe. Mr. Adam, 
 with, I venture to think, too much regard for ακριβολογία, 
 maintains that it is within, not on the surface of, the Earth. 
 " If the light is ' straight like a pillar,' " he writes (note on 
 616b, 13), "and stretches 'through all the Heaven and the 
 Earth,* it follows that as the Earth is in the middle of the 
 Universe, the ' middle of the light ' will be at the centre of the 
 Earth. No other interpretation of κατά μέσον το φως is 
 either natural or easy. It would seem, therefore, that at the 
 end of the fourth day after leaving the Meadow the Souls are 
 at the central point both of the Universe and of the Earth, as 
 is maintained by, among others, Schneider and Donaldson ; and 
 this view is also in harmony with some of the most important 
 features of the remaining part of the narrative." 
 
 My view is that the throne of Necessity is on the surface 
 of the Earth, at that spot where the pillar of light — the axis 
 on which the Cosmos revolves — was seen, by the Pilgrim Souls 
 as they approached, to touch the ground, — seen, with the 
 dccompanying knowledge (so characteristic of dream-experience) 
 that it goes through the Earth and comes out at the antipodal 
 spot. I do not think that we ought to press the phrase κατά 
 μέσον το φώ<ζ, as Mr. Adam does. Apart from the fact that 
 the Pythagorean or Parmenidean central ^Avάyκη was not in 
 the centre of the Earth, the whole scenery of the Myth and 
 its general fidelity to mythological tradition seem to me to be 
 against putting Plato's throne of Necessity, as Mr. Adam does, 
 in the centre of the Earth. The Myth begins by telling us 
 that the Souls came, some of them out of the Earth, some of 
 them down from " Heaven," to the Meadow. The Meadow is 
 certainly on the surface of the Earth. Their journey thence to 
 the throne of Necessity is evidently on the surface of the 
 Earth, — they have the sky above them ; they see the pillar of 
 light in the sky before them for a whole day, the fourth day 
 of their march, as they approach it. There is no suggestion of 
 their going down on that day into Tartarus in order to reach 
 the " middle of the light " at the centre of the Earth. Those 
 of them who came out 5f Tartarus are still out of it, and are 
 
168 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 not going back into it. And those who came out of the region 
 described as ουρανός, " Heaven," are still out of that region. 
 Hence, if I am right in identifying the ουρανός of the Hep. 
 with the " True Surface of the Earth " of the Fhaedo Myth, 
 Mr. Adam cannot be right when he says, 616 B, 11 (cf. 614 
 c, n.), that " Plato in all probability thinks of the Χβψών as 
 somewhere on the True Surface of the Earth described by him 
 in the Myth in the Fhaedo, and it is apparently along this 
 surface that the Souls progress until they come in view of the 
 light." The True Surface of the Earth and Tartarus, accord- 
 ing to my view, were both equally left when the Χβιμών was 
 reached. The Souls are now journeying along the " Third 
 Way," which leads, under the open sky, by the throne of 
 Necessity, and then by the Kiver of Lethe, eh yiveacv. The 
 Kiver of Lethe does not appear in the list of the subterranean 
 or infernal rivers given in the Fhaedo ; ^ the mythological 
 tradition (observed even by Dante, as we have seen) places it 
 under the open sky — probably the sky of the under-world — 
 the antipodal hemisphere of the Earth. And the φερεσθαυ 
 άνω eh την yeveatv άττοντας tuairep αστέρας (621 b), from 
 which Mr. Adam (citing Aen. vi. 748 fP.) infers " that the 
 Souls, just before their re-incarnation, are underground," seems 
 to me, on the contrary, entirely in accordance with the view 
 that, encamped near the Eiver of Lethe, they are on the sur- 
 face of the Earth, under the open sky, up into which they 
 shoot in various directions like meteors, — surely an inappro- 
 priate picture if they were down in a cavern somewhere at the 
 centre of the Earth. 
 
 The whole movement, in short, of the Myth of Er, from 
 the meeting of the two companies of Souls at the Meadow 
 onwards, is above ground, under the open sky. From afar 
 they see a pillar of light reaching down through the sky to 
 
 ^ Olympiodorus, Schol. in Phaedonem, connects the list of infernal rivers with 
 Orphic tradition — ol τταραδώόμβνοί τέσσαρβί ποταμοί κατά. την Όρψέως τταράδοσιν 
 rots VTToyeLoii avaXoyovcri δ' στοιχείοΐζ re καΐ κέντροι$ κατά δύο άντίθέσει^. 6 
 μέν yap JIvpίφ\cyέθωι' τφ irvpl καΐ τ^ άνατόΚχι, ό δέ Κωκντόί τ•η yrj καΐ τί? 
 δύσα, ό δ^ Άχέρων αέρι re καΐ μεσημβρίφ. τούτου$ μ^ν O/)0e()s οντω διέταξαν, 
 avTOs δέ τδν 'UKeavbv τφ ί/δαη καΐ Trj άρκτφ ττροσοικβωΐ. Here the River of 
 Lethe does not appear. 
 
 Roscher (art. " Lethe ") gives the following mentions of Lethe: Simonides, 
 Upig. 184 (Bergk) — this is the first mention, but the authorship is doubtful ; 
 Aristoph. Banae, 186 ; Plato, Hep. 621 ; Plutarch, Cons, ad Apoll. ch. 15, in 
 quotation from a dramatic writer ; Virg. Aen. vi. 705, 715 ; Lucian, de luctu, 
 §§ 2-9 ; MorL Dial. 13. 6, 23. 2 ; Ovid, Bp. ex Pont. 2, 4, 23. 
 
THE MYTH OF EE 169 
 
 the Earth ; and, because Plato, the Dreamer of the Myth, 
 recognises this pillar as the axis of the Cosmos — the cause of 
 its necessary revolutions— ^Id Γ when the Souls are come to the 
 foot of the pillar, it is no longer a pillar reaching down 
 through the sky that they see, but Necessity herself sitting on 
 Earth, on her throne, with a model of the Cosmos revolving in 
 her lap. 
 
 There is another point on which I feel obliged to 
 differ from Mr. Adam. " It is clear," he says (note on Bejp. 
 616 c), " that the light not only passes through the centre of 
 the Universe, but also, since it holds the heavens together like 
 the undergirders of men-of-war, round the outer surface of the 
 heavenly sphere " — i.e. the ends of the light which passes round 
 the outer surface are brought inside the sphere, and, being 
 joined in the middle, form the pillar. This seems to me to 
 make too much of the man-of-war, or trireme. It is enough 
 to take Plato to say that the, .pillar (which alone is mentioned) 
 holds the Universe together in its particular way, as the 
 ντΓοζώματα, in their particular way, hold the trireme together. 
 And if there is a light passed round the outer surface of the 
 Heaven, as well as one forming its axis, why do the Pilgrim 
 Souls see only the latter ? The Heavens are diaphanous. The 
 Pilgrims ought, if Mr. Adam's view is correct, to see not only 
 the pillar of light rising vertically from the horizon at a certain 
 fixed point towards which they journey, but also another band 
 of light — that which surrounds the outside of the Universe — 
 travelling round with the motion of the sphere of the fixed 
 stars from East to West. 
 
 IV 
 
 I shall now conclude what I have to say about the Myth 
 of Er with a few words on the great philosophical question 
 raised in it. I mean the question of How to reconcile Eree 
 Will with the Eeign of Law. Both are affirmed in the Myth. 
 The Pilgrim Souls are conducted to a spot at which they see, 
 with their own eyes, the working of the Universal Law — they 
 stand beside the axis on which the Cosmos revolves, and see 
 clearly that the revolutions " cannot be otherwise." They see 
 that the axis of the Cosmos is the spindle of Άνάτγκη : — and, 
 
170 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 behold ! there sits ^Κνώ^κη herself on her throne, and there are 
 the three Fates, with solemn ritual, ordering the succession of 
 events in time according to the law of ^λνάηκτ). Yet, within 
 the very precincts of the court of ''λνάηκτ] in which they 
 stand, the Pilgrim Souls hear the Prophet telling them in the 
 words of Lachesis, that " they are ijm to choose, and will be 
 held responsible for their choice>^ Plato here presents the 
 Idea of Freedom mythically under the form of a prenatal act 
 of choice — the choice, it is to be carefully noted, not of par- 
 ticular things, but of a Whole Life — the prenatal " choice " of 
 that whole complex of circumstances in which particular things 
 are chosen in this earthly life. Each Soul, according to its 
 nature, clothes itself in certain circumstances — comes into, 
 and goes through, this earthly life in circumstances which it 
 has itself chosen — that is, in circumstances which are to be 
 regarded not as forcing it, or dominating it mechanically 
 from without, but as being the environment in which it 
 exhibits its freedom or natural character as a living creatur^/ 
 Among the circumstances of a Life " chosen," a fixed character 
 of the Soul itself, we are told, is not included — ψυγΎ]ς Be 
 τάξιν ουκ ivetvaL {Rep. 618 b), — because the Soul is modified 
 by the Life which it chooses. This means that the Soul, 
 choosing the circumstances, or Life, chooses, or makes itself 
 responsible for, its own character, as afterwards modified, and 
 necessarily modified, by the circumstances, or Life. In other 
 words, a man is responsible here on Earth for actions pro- 
 ceeding from a connate character which is modified here in 
 accordance with the circumstances of a general scheme of life 
 made unalterable by Necessity and the Fates before he was 
 born — αίρβίσθω βίον ω σύνεσται ef ανάγκης {Hep. 617 ε). 
 In presenting Moral Freedom under the Eeign of Natural 
 Law mythically, as Prenatal Choice made irrevocable by 
 ^Avάyκη, Plato lays stress, as he does elsewhere, on the 
 unbroken continuity of the responsible Self evolving its 
 character in a series of life-changes. It is the choice made 
 before the throne of ^Ανά^γκη which dominates the behaviour 
 
 ^ It was chiefly in order to express this relation between living creature and 
 environment that Leibniz formulated his theory of Pre-established Harmony. 
 We may say of Leibniz's theory what he says himself of Plato's doctrine of 
 άνάμνησις — that it is "myth" — "toute fabuleuse " {Nouveaux Essais, Avant- 
 propos, p. 190 b, ed. Erdmann). 
 
THE MYTH OF EE 171 
 
 of the Soul in the bodily life on which it is about to enter ; 
 but the choice made before the throne of Ανάγκη depended 
 itself on a disposition formed in a previous life ; the man who 
 chooses the life of a tyrant, and rues his choice as soon as he 
 has made it, but too late, had been virtuous in a previous 
 life, WeL avev φιλοσοφίας — his virtue had been merely 
 " customary," without foundation upon consciously realised 
 principle (Bep. 619 c}^^HPlato thus makes Freedom reside 
 in esse, not in operari.K To be free is to be a continuously 
 existing, self - affirming^ environment -choosing personality, 
 manifesting itself in actions which proceed, according to 
 necessary law, irom itself as placed once for all in the 
 environment which it has chosen — its own natural environ- 
 ment — the environment which is the counterpart of its own 
 character. It is vain to look for freedom of the will in some 
 power of the personality whereby it may interfere with the 
 necessary law according to which charaMer, as modified up to 
 date, manifests itself in certain actionjg; Such a power, such 
 a liberum arhitrium indifferentiae, would be inconsistent with 
 the continuity, and therefore with the freedom and respon- 
 sibility, of the Self. It is, in other words, the freedom of the 
 " noumenal," as distinguished from the " phenomenal " Self, 
 which Plato presents as the " prenatal choice of a Life " — 
 mythically ; which is, indeed, the only way in which such a 
 transcendental idea can be legitimately presented, αίρβίσθω 
 βίον φ σνν^σται εξ ανάγκης* ή δ' άρετη άΒέσττοτον. Α 
 certain Life, with all its fortunes and all its influences on 
 character, when once chosen, is chosen irrevocably.^ But, 
 none the less, it is a life of freedom, for " Virtue is her own 
 mistress." In being conscious of Virtue — that is, of Self as 
 
 ^ For tlie distinction, see Schopenhauer, Parerga UTid Paralipoinena, ii. § 117 ; 
 Die Welt als Wille u. Vorstellung, vol. ii. pp. 364, 365 ; and Die Grundlage der 
 Moral, § 10. In the last of these passages Schopenhauer (explaining the dis- 
 tinction between the "intelligible" and the "empirical" character, the latter of 
 which is related to the former as operari is to esse — operari sequitur esse) quotes 
 Porphyry (in Stobaeus, Eel. 8. §§ 37-40) : τό ykp 6\ov βούλημα τοωΰτ' eoiKev 
 elvaL του HXarwyos ^χβιν μέν τό αύτεξούσιον ras ψνχά,ζ irplv ets σώματα καΐ 
 βίον$ διαφόρους έμιτΐσβΐν, ets τό ^ τούτον τόν βίον έΧέσθαί fj άλλον. 
 
 2 Hobbes' " Sovereign, once chosen, ever afterwards irremovable," is a " founda- 
 tion-myth " ; the social order which constrains individuals to conformity is 
 accounted for "mythically" by a prehistoric act of choice exercised by indi- 
 viduals. They willed themselves into the social order, and may not will them- 
 selves out of it. A " categoricai imperative " is laid upon them to act as social 
 
172 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 striving after the good or self-realisation — the Soul is conscious 
 of its own freedom. This consciousness of " freedom," involved 
 in the consciousness of " Virtue," is better evidence for the 
 reality of freedom than the inability of the logical faculty 
 to understand freedom is against its reality. As Butler 
 says, " The notion of necessity is not applicable to practical 
 subjects, i.e. with respect to them is as if it were not true. 
 . . . Though it were admitted that this opinion of necessity 
 were speculatively true, yet with regard to practice it is as if 
 it were false." '^ 
 
 One other point and I have done with the Myth of Er : 
 The momentary prenatal act of choice which Plato describes 
 in this Myth is the pattern of like acts which have to be 
 performed in a man's natural life. Great decisions have to be 
 made in life, which, once made, are irrevocable, and dominate 
 the man's whole career and conduct afterwards. The chief 
 use of education is to prepare a man for these crises in his 
 life, so that he may decide rightly. The preparation does 
 not consist in a rehearsal, as it were, of the very thing to be 
 done when the crisis comes, — for the nature of the crisis 
 cannot be anticipated, — but in a training of the will and 
 judgment by which they become trustworthy in any difficulty 
 which may be presented to them. The education given to 
 the φύλακβς of Plato's Καλλ/ττολύ? is a training of this kind. 
 Its aim is to cultivate faculties rather than to impart special 
 knowledge. It is a " liberal education " suitable to free men 
 of the governing class, as distinguished from technical instruc- 
 tion by which workmen are fitted for the routine of which 
 they are, so to speak, the slaves. 
 
 ^ Analogy, i. 6. 
 
THE POLITIGUS MYTH 
 
 Introductory Eemarks 
 
 We have now done with the three purely Eschatological Myths, 
 and enter on a series of Myths which are mainly Aetiological. 
 We begin with the Myth of the Alternating World-periods in 
 the Politicus. 
 
 The Cosmos has alternating periods, according as God 
 either goes round with and controls its revolution, or lets go 
 the helm and retires to his watch-tower. When God lets go 
 the helm, the Cosmos, being a ζωον with its own σύμφυτος 
 βτΓίθυμία, and subject, like all creatures, to ^Ιμαρμίνη, begins 
 to revolve in its own direction, which is opposite to God's 
 direction. The change of direction — the least possible change 
 if there is to be change at all — we must ascribe to the change- 
 able nature of the material Cosmos, and not either to God, 
 who is unchangeable, imparting now one motion and then its 
 contrary, or to the agency of another God. When God, then, 
 lets go the helm, the Cosmos begins of itself to revolve back- 
 wards ; and since all events on Earth are produced by the 
 revolution of the Cosmos, the events which happened in one 
 cosmic period are reproduced backwards in the next. Thus 
 the dead of one period rise from their graves in the next as 
 grey -haired men, who gradually become black -haired and 
 beardless, till at last, as infants, they vanish away. This is 
 the account of the fabled <γη^γ€ν€Ϊς. They were men who died 
 and were buried in the cosmic period immediately preceding 
 that of Cronus — the Golden Age of Cronus, when the Earth 
 brought forth food plenteously for all her children, and men 
 and beasts, her common children, talked together, and Βαίμονβς, 
 not mortal men, were kings (cf. Laws, 713). But at last the 
 stock of earthen men ra!i out — το γηϊνον ήΒη τταν άνηΚωτο 
 
 173 
 
174 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 761/09 {Pol. 272 d) — and the age of Cronus came to an end: 
 God let go the helm, and the Cosmos changed the direction 
 of its revolution, the change being accompanied by great 
 earthquakes which destroyed all but a few men and animals. 
 Then the Cosmos calmed down, and for a while, though re- 
 volving in its own direction, not in God's, yet remembered 
 God, and fared well ; but afterwards forgot him, and went 
 from bad to worse ; till God, of his goodness, saved struggling 
 men, now no longer earth-born, from destruction by means of 
 the fire of Prometheus and the arts of Athena and Hephaestus. 
 In due time he will close the present period — that of Zeus — 
 by again taking the helm of the Cosmos. Then will be the 
 Kesurrection of the Dead. Such, in brief, is the Myth of the 
 Changing World-periods in the Politicus. 
 
 Like the Myths already examined, this one deals with 
 God's government of man as a creature at once free to do 
 good and evil, and determined by cosmic iniiuences over 
 which he — and even God the Creator himself, whether from 
 lack or non-use of power hardly matters — have no control. 
 The Myth differs from those which we have examined in not 
 being told by Socrates himself. It is told by an Eleatic 
 Stranger, who says that the younger Socrates, who is present 
 with the elder, will appreciate a μΰθοζ, or story. Similarly, 
 Protagoras prefaces the Myth which he tells (Frot. 320 c) 
 by saying that it will suit Socrates and the others — younger 
 men than himself. 
 
 The Eleatic Stranger in the Politicus tells his Myth 
 ostensibly in order to bring it home to the company that 
 they have defined " kingship " too absolutely — as if the king 
 were a god, and not a human being. Gods directly appointed 
 by the great God were kings on this Earth in a former period; 
 but in the period in which we now live men are the only 
 kings. Kingship must now be conceived " naturalistically " 
 as a product of human society ; and human society itself, like 
 the whole Cosmos of which it is a part, must be conceived 
 " naturalistically " as following its own intrinsic law without 
 divine guidance ah extra. To enforce a " naturalistic " estimate 
 of kingship is the ostensible object of the Myth ; but it soars 
 high, as we shall see, above the argument which it is ostensibly 
 introduced to serve. 
 
THE FOLITICUS MYTH 175 
 
 Context 
 
 The subject of the Politicus is the True Statesman. 
 
 The hest form of government, if we could get it, would he 
 the rule of one eminently good and wise man, who knew and 
 desired the Chief Good of his People, and possessed the art of 
 securing it for them. His unlimited personal initiative would 
 he far better than the best administration of " laws " made only 
 because he could not be found, and because such rulers as were 
 cbctually available could not be trusted with unlimited initiative. 
 
 But before we try to determine exactly the nature of the 
 True Statesman — the man whom we should like to make King, 
 if we could find him ; and before we try to define his Art, and 
 distinguish it from all other arts — and we must try to do this, 
 in order that we may get a standard by which to judge the 
 work-a-day rulers, good and bad, vjhose administration of the 
 " laws " we are obliged to accept as substitute for the personal 
 initiative of the True Statesman, — before we try to formulate 
 this standard, let us raise our eyes to an even higher standard : 
 God is the True Ruler of men; and in the Golden Age he 
 ruled men, not through the instrumentality of human rulers, 
 but Gods were his lieutenants on Earth, and lived among men, 
 and were their Kings. 
 
 It is with this Golden Age, and the great difference between 
 it and the present age, and the cause of the difference, that 
 the Myth told to the elder and the younger Socrates, and to 
 Theodorus the mathematician, by the Stranger from Elea, is 
 concerned. 
 
176 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Politicus, 268E-274E 
 
 268 Ε HE. *Αλλά Βη τω μύθω μον ιτάνυ ιτροσβγβ τον νουν, 
 
 καθάτΓβρ οΐ τταΐΒβς' ττάντως ου ττοΧλα ε/^φευγεί? τταίΒιάς €τη. 
 
 ΝΕ. 2ί1. Αε70^9 αν. 
 
 BE. Ήι/ τοίνυν καΧ en βσται των τταΚαι Χβ'χθβντων 
 ΤΓοΧλά Τ6 αΧλα και Βη καΐ το ττβρί την ^Ατρέως Τ6 καΧ 
 ©υβστου ΧβγθβΙσαν epiv φάσμα. άκήκοας <γάρ ττου καϊ 
 άίΓομνημονβνβί^; 6 φασί γενέσθαι τ6τ€. 
 
 ΝΕ. %Ω>. Ύο ΤΓβρΙ της 'χ^ρυσης άρνος ϊσως σημβΐον 
 φράζεις, 
 269 BE. ΟύΒαμώς, άλλα το irepl της μβταβοΧης Βνσβώς τε 
 
 καϊ άνατοΧής ηΧίου καϊ των αλΧων άστρων, ώς άρα odev 
 μεν άνατεΧλεί νυν, εις τούτον τότε τον τόττον εΒύετο, 
 άνετεΧΧε δ' εκ του εναντίου, τότε Βε Βη μαρτυρήσας άρα 6 
 θεός ^Ατρεΐ μετεβαΧεν αυτό εττϊ το νυν σ'χημα. 
 
 ΝΕ. 2ί2. Αεγετα^ yap ουν Βη καϊ τούτο. 
 
 BE. ΚαΙ μην αυ καϊ την ^ε βασιΧείαν, ην ηρζε 
 Ιίρόνος, ΤΓοΧΧών άκηκόαμεν. 
 Β ΝΕ. 2ί2. Πλειστωΐ' μεν ουν. 
 
 Be. Ύί Βε ; το τους εμττροσθεν φύεσθαυ 'γη^γενεΐς καϊ 
 μη εξ άΧΧηΧων ^εννάσθαι ; 
 
 ΝΕ. Sil. ΚαΙ τούτο εν των ττάΧαι Χεγθεντων. 
 
 ΒΕ. Ύαυτα τοίνυν εστί μεν ξύμτταντα εκ ταύτοΰ 
 Ίτάθους, καϊ ττρος τούτοις έτερα μυρία καϊ τούτων ετι 
 θαυμαστότερα, Bta Βε γ^ρόνου ΊτΧήθος τα μεν αυτών 
 άττεσβηκε, τα Βε Βιεστταρμενα εϊρηται χοορϊς έκαστα άιτ 
 C αΚΚηΚων, ο Β εστϊ ττάσι τούτοις αϊτιον το ιτάθος, ούΒεϊς 
 εϊρηκε, νυν Βε Βη Χεκτεον εΙς yap την του βασιΧεως 
 άττόΒειξιν ττρεψει ρηθέν. 
 
 ΝΕ. ΧΩ. Κ,άΧΧιστ είττες, καϊ λέγε μηΒεν εΧΧείττων. 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 177 
 
 Translation 
 
 Stranger. Here beginneth my wonderful Tale ! Be as a 
 child, and listen ! for indeed not far art thou gotten from the 
 years of childish things. 
 
 Socrates} Let us hear it. 
 
 Stranger. Well, of those things which have been told from 
 old time, there be many which came to pass, and shall yet 
 again come to pass : whereof I count the Sign which appeared 
 when that Strife the Old Story telleth of was between Atreus 
 and Thyestes ; for, methinks, thou hast heard what they say 
 came then to pass, and rememberest it well. 
 
 Socrates. Is it of the marvel of the Golden Lamb that thou 
 speakest ? 
 
 Stranger. Not of that, but of the change in the setting 
 and rising of the sun and stars ; for the story goes that in the 
 quarter whence they now rise in that did they then set, rising 
 from the opposite quarter ; but that God, bearing witness for 
 Atreus, changed them into the way which they now keep. 
 
 Socrates. That story also I know. 
 
 Stranger. And of the kingship of Cronus, too, have we 
 heard many tell. 
 
 Socrates. Yea, very many. 
 
 Stranger. And, moreover, do they not tell of how men at 
 first grew out of the earth, and were not begotten of their 
 kind? 
 
 Socrates. That also is one of the old stories. 
 
 Stranger. Well, of all these things one thing is cause ; 
 yea, of innumerable other things also which are more wonder- 
 ful than these things ; but by reason of length of time most 
 are vanished, and of the rest mention is made separately of 
 each, as of that which hath no fellowship with the other 
 things. But of that which is the cause of all these things no 
 man hath spoken. Let it therefore now be told ; for when it 
 hath been set forth, it will help to our proof concerning the 
 King. 
 
 Socrates. Good ! Go on, and leave out nothing. 
 
 1 Socrates the Younger is Ihe interlocutor throughout the whole passage 
 translated. 
 
178 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 BE. ^Ακούοί^ αν. το yap ττάν τόδε τοτβ μεν αύτο^ 6 
 ^€09 ξυμ7ΓoBηyeΐ ττορβυόμβνον καϊ σιτγκυκΧβΐ, τοτβ δ' άνήκεν, 
 όταν αΐ 7Γ6ρίο8ον του ττροσηκοντο^ αυτω μετρον βΙΧηφωσυν 
 ηΒη "χ^ρόνου, το δε ττάΧιν αντόματον eh τάναντια ττβριά- 
 D ^€ται, ζωον ον καϊ φρόνησιν 6ΐληχο<ζ έκ τον συναρμοσαντος 
 αυτό κατ άρχά?. τούτο δε αυτω το άνάτταΧίν levat Bta 
 τόδ* έξ ανά^κη^ βμψυτον yiyovev. 
 
 ΝΕ. ΣΩ. Δίά το τΓοΐον Βή ; 
 
 3Ε. Το κατά ταύτα καϊ ωσαύτως βγειν άεΐ καϊ ταύτον 
 elvaL τοις ττάντων Θειοτάτοις ττροσηκβί μονοις, σώματος δε 
 φύσις ου ταύτης της τάξεως, ον δε ούρανον καϊ κοσμον 
 εττωνομάκαμεν, ττοΧΧών μεν καϊ μακαρίων τταρα του 
 ηεννησαντος μετείΧηψεν, άταρ ουν Βη κεκοινώνηκε ^ε καϊ 
 σώματος. όθεν αυτω μεταβοΧης άμοίρω ηίηνεσθαι Βία 
 Ε τταντος άΒύνατον, κατά Βύναμίν γε μην 6 τι μαΧιστα εν 
 τω αυτω κατά ταύτα μίαν φοράν κινείται' Βώ την άνα- 
 κύκΧησιν εϊΧηχεν, ο τι σμικροτάτην της αυτού κινήσεως 
 τταραΧΧαξιν. αύτο δε εαυτό στρεφειν άεΐ σγεΒον ούΒενΙ 
 Βυνατον ττΧήν τω των κινουμένων αύ ττάντων ή^ουμενω. 
 κινεΐν δε τούτω τοτέ μεν αΧΧως, αύθις δε εναντίως ού 
 θέμις. εκ ττάντων Βη τούτων τον κόσμον μήτε αύτον 'χρη 
 φάναι στρεφειν εαυτόν αεί, μήτ αύ οΧον άεΐ ύττο θεού 
 στρεφεσθαι Βιττας καϊ εναντίας ττεριαηω^άς^ μήτ αύ Βύο 
 270 τινε θεώ φρονούντε εαυτοΐς εναντία στρεφειν αυτόν, αλλ' 
 οττερ άρτι ερρήθη καϊ μόνον Χοιττόν, τότε μεν ύττ άΧΧης 
 συμττοΒη^εΐσθαι θείας αιτίας, το ζην ττάΧιν εττικτώμενον 
 καϊ Χαμβάνοντα άθανασίαν εττισκευαστήν τταρα του 
 Βημιονρ^ού, τότε δ' όταν άνεθ?/, Βι* εαυτού αύτον ιεναι, 
 κατά καιρόν άφεθεντα τοιούτον, ώστε άνάτταΧιν ττορεύ- 
 εσθαι ττόΧΧάς ττεριοΒων μυριάΒας Βιά το μεηιστον ον 
 καϊ ισορροττώτατον εττΐ σμικροτάτου βαΐνον ττοΒος 
 Ιεναι. 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 179 
 
 Stranger. Hearken ! This Universe, for a certain space of 
 time, God himself doth help to guide and propel in the circular 
 motion thereof; and then, when the cycles of the time 
 appointed unto it have accomplished their measure, he letteth 
 it go. Then doth it begin to go round in the contrary direc- 
 tion, of itself, being a living creature which hath gotten 
 understanding from him who fashioned it in the beginning. 
 This circuit in the contrary direction belongeth of necessity to 
 the nature of the Universe because of this — 
 
 Socrates. Because of what ? 
 
 Stranger. Because that to be constant in the same state 
 alway, and to be the same, belongeth only to those things 
 which are the most divine of all ; but the nature of Body is not 
 of this order. Now, that which we call Heaven and Universe 
 hath been made, through him who begat it, partaker of many 
 blessed possessions ; but, mark this well. Body also is of the 
 portion thereof. Wherefore it is not possible that it should 
 be wholly set free from change, albeit, as far as is possible, it 
 revolveth in the same place, with one uniform motion : for 
 this reason, when it changed, it took unto itself circular 
 motion in the contrary direction, which is the smallest 
 possible alteration of the motion which belongeth unto it. 
 Now, to be constant alway in self-motion is, methinks, im- 
 possible save only with him who ruleth all the things which 
 are moved ; and move them now in this direction and 
 again in that he may not. From all this it followeth 
 that we must not say that the Universe either of itself 
 moveth itself alway, or again is alway wholly moved by 
 God to revolve now in one direction and then in the contrary 
 direction ; nor must we say that there be two Gods which, 
 being contrariously minded, do cause it so to revolve ; but 
 we must hold by that which was just now said and alone 
 remaineth, to wit, that at one time it is holpen and guided by 
 the power of God supervening, and hath more life added unto 
 it, and receiveth immortality from the Creator afresh ; and 
 then, at another time, when it is let go, it moveth of it- 
 self, having been so opportunely released that thereafter it 
 journeyeth in the contrary direction throughout ages innumer- 
 able, being so great of bulk, and so evenly balanced, and turn- 
 ing on so fine a point. 
 
180 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Β NE. Xil. Φαίνβταί yovv Brj καΐ μαλα €ΐκ6τω<; €ΐρήσθαι 
 
 ττάνθ^ οσα ^ί€\ηΧυθα<;. 
 
 ΞΕ. Χο^ισάμ^νοί Βη ξνννοήσωμβν το ττάθος €κ των 
 νυν \e^eevTWVi ο ττάντων βφαμβν eivai, των θαυμαστών 
 αϊτίον, €στι yap ονν Βη τουτ αυτό. 
 
 ΝΕ. %η. Το ΐΓοΐον ; 
 
 HE. Το την τον τταντος φοράν τοτβ μβν εφ' α νυν 
 κυκΚβΐται φύρβσθαί, τοτβ δ* eVt τάναντία. 
 
 ΝΕ. ta. ηώς Βη ; 
 
 BE. Ύαύτην την μβταβοΧην ηηζΐσθαι Bel των irepl τον 
 C ούρανον ^ί^νομενων τροττών ττασών elvao μ€^ίστην καΐ 
 τεΧβωτάτην τροττην, 
 
 ΝΕ. Sn. "Εοικ€ yodv, 
 
 3Ε. Μέγιστα? τοίννν καΐ μ€ταβο\ά<; 'χ^ρη νομίζειν 
 yLyveadav τοτ€ τοΐς εντός ήμΐν οίκοϋσι,ν αυτού* 
 
 ΝΕ. Sil. ΚαΙ τουτ εΙκός. 
 
 BE. Μ€ταβο\άς Be με^αΚας καΐ ττοΧΚάς καΐ τταντοίας 
 συμφ€ρομ€νας αρ* ουκ ϊσμεν την των ζώων φύσιν οτί χαλε- 
 τώς ανί'χεται ; 
 
 ΝΕ. til. Πώς Β" ου ; 
 
 BE. ΦθοραΙ τοίνυν έξ ανάγκης τ6τ€ μβ^ισται ξυμβαί- 
 D νονσι των τε αΧλων ζώων, καΐ Βη καΐ το των άνθρώττων 
 γεϊ/09 oXijov τι ττεριλειττεται. ττερί Be τούτους αΧλα τε 
 Ίταθήματα ττοΧΚά καΐ θαυμαστά καϊ καινά ξυμττίτΓτευ, 
 μΑ^ιστον Be ToBe καϊ ξυνεττομενον Trj τον τταντος aveiXi^ei, 
 τότε όταν ή της νυν καθεστηκυίας εναντία ^ί^νηται 
 τροττή. 
 
 ΝΕ. tn. Ίο τΓοΐον ; 
 
 BE. 'Ήζ/ ήΧικίαν €καστον είχε των ζώων, αΰτη ττρώτον 
 μεν εστη ττάντων, καϊ ετταύσατο ττάν όσον ην θνητον εττΐ 
 το ^εραίτερον ΙΒεΙν ττορευόμενον, μεταβαΧΧον δε ττάΧυν εττΐ 
 Ε τουναντίον οίον νεώτερον καϊ άτταΧώτερον εφύετο. καϊ των 
 μεν Ίτρεσβυτερων αί Τ^υκαΙ τριχίες εμεΧαίνοντο, των δ' αΰ 
 ^ενειώντων αΐ τταρειαΐ Χεαινόμεναι ττάΧιν εττΐ την τταρεΧ- 
 θουσαν ώραν εκαστον καθίστασαν, των δε ήβώντων τά 
 σώματα Χεαινόμενα καϊ σμικρότερα καθ^ ήμεραν καϊ νύκτα 
 εκάστην ^ι^νόμενα ττάΧιν εις την του νεο^ενους τταιΒος 
 φύσιν άττηεί, κατά τε την ψυχην καϊ κατά το σώμα 
 άφομοίουμενα' το δ* εντεύθεν ηΒη μαραινόμενα κομιΒτ} το 
 ^άμτταν εξηφανίζετο. τών δ* αυ βιαίως τεΧευτώντων εν 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 181 
 
 Socrates. All this, methinks, hath great likelihood. 
 
 Stranger. Let us then reason with ourselves, and compre- 
 hend from this that which, coming to pass, is, as we said, 
 the cause of all these wonders. Well, it is this. 
 
 Socrates. What ? 
 
 Stranger. The circular motion of the Universe going as it 
 now goeth, and then at another time going in the contrary 
 direction. 
 
 Socrates. How ? 
 
 Stranger. This alteration we must needs deem to be of 
 all the changes which are accomplished in the Heaven the 
 change which is greatest and most complete. 
 
 Socrates. So it would seem. 
 
 Stranger. And we must conclude that by reason of it the 
 greatest changes are then accomplished for us who dwell 
 within this Universe. 
 
 Socrates. That also is likely. 
 
 Stranger. Now, when changes many and great and of all 
 sorts come to pass, is it not true that the nature of living 
 creatures hardly endureth them ? 
 
 Socrates. Yea, 'tis true. 
 
 Stranger. So it is then, of necessity, that beasts do perish 
 most, and of mankind only a little remnant is left ; and unto 
 these men do many things strange and new happen, but the 
 strangest is that which attendeth the rolling back of the 
 Universe when the motion contrary to this which is now 
 established cometh to be. 
 Socrates. What is that ? 
 
 Stranger. Then cometh it to pass that the age of every 
 creature, according as his time of life is, first standeth still, 
 and mortals are all stayed in that course which maketh them 
 look older and older : but presently they begin to go in the 
 contrary direction — that is to say, they grow younger and more 
 tender ; and the hoary locks of the old man become black, and 
 the cheeks of the bearded man become smooth, and he is 
 restored to the bygone springtime of his life ; and the lad 
 becometh smooth again, and smaller day after day and night 
 after night, till he cometh back, soul and body, unto the 
 nature and likeness of^ a new-born child ; and thereafter he 
 ever dwindleth away, and at the last utterly vanisheth. Like- 
 
182 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 τω Tore 'χρόνω το τον νεκρού σώμα ταύτα ταύτα ττάσ'χον 
 271 τταθηματα Βια τάχ^ονς άΒηΧον iv oXtyaLf; ήμύραις Βιεφθβί- 
 
 ρ€ΤΟ. 
 
 ΝΕ. Χω. Τέν€σις Be Βη τίς τοτ ήν, ώ ξένε, ζώων ; 
 κα\ τίνα τρότΓον ef άΧληΧων iyevvcovTO ; 
 
 HE. ΑήΧον, ώ Χώκρατ€<;, οτι το μβν εξ άΧΚηΧων ουκ 
 ην iv TTJ τοτ€ φύσει 'γεννώμενον, το Βε ^η'γενες εΙναί ττοτε 
 yivo^ Χεγθεν^ τοΰτ ην το κατ εκείνον τον γ^ρόνον εκ yrj<; 
 ττάΧιν άναστρεφομενον, άττεμνημονεύετο Βε νττο των ημέτερων 
 Ίτρο^όνων των ττρώτων, οΐ τεΧεντώστ) μεν Trj ττροτερα 
 
 Β ττερίφορα τον εξής 'χ^ρονον ε^ειτόνουν^ τήσΒε Βε κατ αρ'χα<ζ 
 εφύοντο' τούτων yap ούτοι κηρυκε<; lykvovd^ ημίν των 
 Xoyωv, ΟΪ νυν ύττο ττοΧΧών ούκ ορθώς άτηστούνται. το 
 yap εντεύθεν, οΐμαι, 'χ^ρη ξνννοεΐν, εγόμενον ^ yap εστί τω 
 τους ττρεσβντας εττΐ την τον τταιΒος Ιεναι φύσιν, εκ τών 
 τετεΧεντη κοτών αν, κειμένων δ' εν yrj, ττάΧιν εκεί ξννιστα- 
 μενονς και άναβιωσκομενονς εττεσθαι τη τροττη σννανακν- 
 κΧονμένονς ^ εις τάναντία της yεvεσεως, και yηyεvεlς Βη 
 
 C κατά τούτον τον Xoyov εξ άvάyκης φνομενονς όντως ε'χειν 
 τοννομα και τον Xoyov, οσονς μη θεός αυτών εις άΧΧην 
 μοΐραν εκόμισεν. 
 
 ΝΕ. Χίΐ. }ζ.ομιΒη μεν ονν τοντό yε εττεται τοις 
 εμττροσθεν. άλλα Βη τον βίον ον εττι της Υ,ρόνον φης 
 είναι Βννάμεως, ττότερον εν εκείναις ήν ταΐς τροτταΐς ή εν 
 ταΐσΒε ; την μεν yap τών άστρων τε και ήΧίον μεταβοΧην 
 ΒήΧον ώς εν εκατεραις ξνμττίτττει ταΐς τροτταΐς yίyvεσθaι, 
 βΕ. Καλώ? τω λόγω ξνμτταρηκοΧούθηκας, ο δ' ήρον 
 
 D Ίτερι τον τταντα αυτόματα yίyvεσθaι τοις άνθρώττοις, ήκιστα 
 τής ννν εστί καθεστηκνίας φοράς, αλλ' ήν καΐ τοντο της 
 εμττροσθεν, τότε yap αυτής ττρώτον τής κνκΧήσεως ήρχεν 
 ετΓΐμεΧονμενος οΧης 6 θεός* ώς ννν κατά τόττονς, ταύτον 
 τοντο ντΓΟ θεών άρ'χόντων ττάντη τα τον κόσμον μέρη 
 ΒιειΧημμένα. και Βη και τα ζώα κατά yέvη και ατ^έΧας 
 οιον νομής θείοι ΒιειΧήφεσαν Βαίμονες, αυτάρκης εΙς τταντα 
 
 Ε έκαστος έκάστοις ων οις αύτος ενεμεν, ώστε οντ aypiov ήν 
 ούΒεν ούτε άΧΧήΧων εΒωΒαί, ττόΧεμός τε ούκ ενήν ονΒε 
 στασις το τταράτταν αΧΧα θ\ οσα τής τοιαύτης εστί 
 κατακοσμησεως έττομενα, μνρι αν εϊη Xέyειv^ το δ' ονν τών 
 
 ^ €ν6μ€νον. 2 συνανακνκ\ονμένη$. 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 183 
 
 wise the corpses of them that have died by violence at this 
 time go through the same changes quickly, and in a few days 
 are dissolved and gone clean out of sight. 
 
 Socrates. But how were creatures then brought forth, 
 and after what manner were they begotten of their kind ? 
 
 Stranger. It is manifest, Socrates, that none was then 
 naturally begotten of his kind, but that the earth-born kind 
 they tell of was that which came up again from the earth in 
 those days, whereof our first forefathers had remembrance 
 who lived in the time next after the end of the former 
 Period, being born at the beginning of this present one. 
 From their mouth hath word concerning these things 
 come down unto us : which of many is not believed ; 
 but herein they err ; for consider what foUoweth next : — 
 After the old men who go back to childhood, there follow in 
 their turn the men who are already dead and lying in their 
 graves ; these begin therein to be compacted anew out of their 
 elements, and when his time cometh unto each of them in 
 the cycle of generation whose motion is contrary to the former 
 motion, he riseth from the dead. Thus were men, of necessity, 
 earth-born in those days, and this name of earth-born which 
 we have received is the true name of them all, save of those 
 whom God translated to some other portion. 
 
 Socrates. Yea, indeed, this foUoweth from that which 
 went before. But tell me — the life thou sayest men led 
 when Cronus reigned, was it in that Period or in this ? 
 For 'tis plain that the change whereof thou speakest in the 
 course of the stars and the sun falleth to happen in each. 
 
 Stranger. Well hast thou followed the argument ; and 
 thy question is to be answered thus: — That the age when 
 all things came forth spontaneous for the use of man con- 
 grueth not with this present motion, but with that which 
 was before ; for then did God control with his providence the 
 whole revolution, and all the parts of the Universe every- 
 where were divided amongst gods appointed to rule over them, 
 as now gods rule over certain places ; and, moreover, living 
 creatures, according to their kinds, were assigned unto angels, 
 as flocks unto divine shepherds, each angel being wholly sufii- 
 cient in all things for his own flock, so that there was then 
 no savagery, no devouring of one another, no war or sedition 
 
184 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ανθρώπων Xe-^Oev αυτομάτου irepL βίου hia το τοωνΒβ 
 €Ϊρηταί. Θ€ο<ζ eve^ev αύτού'ξ αύτ6<ζ βτηστατών, καθάττερ νυν 
 άνθρωτΓοι, ζωον ον βτερον θεωτερον, άΧλα <γ€νη φαυΧότβρα 
 αυτών νομεύουσι,. νβμοντος Se εκείνου ττολιτεΐαί τε ουκ ήσαν 
 272 ού8ε κτήσεις γυναικών καϊ τταίΒων εκ 'γης yap άνεβιώσκοντο 
 ττάντες, ούΒεν μεμνημενοί των ττρόσθεν άλλα τα μεν 
 τοιαύτα άττην ττάντα, καρττούς Βε άφθονους ^Ιχ^ον άττο τε 
 ΒενΒρων καϊ ττοΧΚής ΰΧης άΧΧης, ούχ ύττο ^εωρ^ίας 
 φυομενους, αλλ' αυτόματης άναΒιΒούσης της ^ης* γυμνοί 
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 των ωρών αύτοΐς άΧυττον εκεκρατο, μαΧακάς Βε εύνάς εΐ'χον 
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 Β Χώκρατες, άκούεις μεν τον τών εττϊ Κρόνου' τόνΒε Β\ 
 ον X6yoς εττϊ Αιος είναι, τον νυνί, τταρών αύτος ησθησαι. 
 κρΐναι Β αύτοΐν τον εύΒαιμονέστερον άρ* αν Βύναιό τε καϊ 
 εθεΧησειας ; 
 
 ΝΕ. 2Ω. ΟύΒαμώς. 
 
 3Ε. ΈούΧει Βήτα εyώ σοι τρόττον τινά Βιακρίνω ; 
 
 ΝΕ. Χω. Τίάνυ μεν ουν, 
 
 οΈα. Et μεν τοίνυν οι τρόφιμοι του Κρόνου, τταρούσης 
 αύτοΐς ούτω ττοΧΧής σχ^οΧής καϊ Βυνάμεως ττρός το μη 
 μόνον άνθρώτΓοις άΧΧά καϊ θηρίοις Βιά Xόyωv Βύνασθαι 
 C ξυyyίyvεσθaι, κατεγ^ρώντο τούτοις ξύμιτασιν εττϊ φιΧοσοφίαν, 
 μετά τε θηρίων καϊ μετ αΚΧηΧων όμιΧοΰντες, καϊ ττυνθα- 
 νομενοι τταρά ττάσης φύσεως εϊ τινά τις ιΒίαν Βύναμιν 
 εγουσα γσθετό τι Βιάφορον τών άΧΧων εις συvayυpμbv 
 φρονησεως, εΰκριτον, οτι τών νυν οι τότε μυρίω ττρος 
 εύΒαιμονίαν Βιεφερον. εΐ Βε εμττιττΧάμενοι σίτων άΒην καϊ 
 στοτών BιεXεyovτo ττρος άΧΧηΧους καϊ τα θηρία μύθους, οϊα 
 D δ^ καϊ τα νυν ττερϊ αυτών Xεyovτaι, καϊ τούτο, ώς y€ 
 κατά την εμην Βόξαν άττοφηνασθαι, καϊ μάΧ' εΰκριτον, 
 όμως δ' ούν ταύτα μεν άφώμεν, εως αν ήμΐν μηνυτής τις 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 185 
 
 at all : nay, time would fail to tell of all the consequences of 
 that dispensation. 
 
 Now, therefore, hearken, and I will declare the truth that 
 is in the old Tale of the time when all things came forth 
 spontaneous. God himself was then the Overseer and Shep- 
 herd of men, even as now man, being as a god amongst the 
 creatures which are beneath him, is the shepherd of their 
 tribes. When God was our Shepherd there was no civil 
 government, and men had not wives and children, but all came 
 up into life again from the Earth, without remembrance of 
 aught before. Instead of these things they had in abundance, 
 from trees and other plants, fruits which the Earth without 
 husbandry brought forth spontaneous. For the most part they 
 lived without raiment and without couches, in the open air ; 
 for the seasons were tempered to do them no hurt ; and soft 
 beds had they in the grass which sprang abundantly from the 
 Earth. 
 
 Now have I told thee, Socrates, of the life which was when 
 Cronus reigned ; as for the life which now is, which they say 
 is under the rule of Zeus, thou art here thyself and knowest 
 what it is. Canst thou, and wilt thou, determine which of 
 these two lives is the happier ? 
 
 Socrates, I cannot. 
 
 Stranger. Shall I then determine this for thee after some 
 sort? 
 
 Socrates. Prithee do. 
 
 Stranger. Well then, if the nurslings of Cronus, having 
 so great leisure and faculty of joining in discourse not only 
 with men but with beasts, made use of their opportunity all 
 for the getting of wisdom, conversing with beasts and one 
 with another, and inquiring everywhere of Nature if haply any 
 part thereof had some peculiar faculty, and perceived, better 
 than another part, aught which might be of advantage for the 
 ingathering of true knowledge, — if this, I say, was their manner 
 of life, 'twould be no hard matter to determine our question : 
 they were a thousand times happier than we are. And even 
 if, after they had eaten and drunken their fill, they passed the 
 time telling tales one to another and to the beasts — such tales 
 as even to this day are told of them, — 'twould still, I declare, 
 be easy to determine our question ; nevertheless, let us put 
 
186 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ικανός φαντ}, ττοτβρως ol τότβ τας €7ηθνμία<ί βΐχ^ον irepL re 
 €'7ηστημων καί της των \6ηων γ^ρείας' ου Β βνβκα τον 
 μνθον rjyeipa^ev, τούτο \6κτ€ον, Χνα το μβτά τούτο eh το 
 ττρόσθβν ΤΓβραίνωμβν. Έττε^δ^ yap ττάντων τούτων χ^ρόνος 
 €Τ€\€ώθη καϊ μ€ταβο\ην eBev yiyveadat καΐ Βη καϊ το 
 
 Ε ηήϊνον ήΒη ττάν άνηΚωτο 'γένος, ττάσας εκάστης της "^νχ^ης 
 τας γ€ν€σ€ί9 άττοΒεΒωκυίας, οσα ην εκάστη ττροστα'χθεν, 
 τοσαΰτα βίς yrjv σττίρματα ττεσούσης, τ6τ€ Βη τον τταντος 
 6 μεν κυβερνήτης, οίον ττηΒαΧίων οϊακος άφεμενος, εΙς την 
 αυτόν ττερίωττην άττεστη, τον Βε Βη κόσμον ττάΧιν άνε- 
 στρεφεν ειμαρμένη τε καϊ ξνμφντος εττιθυμία» ττάντες ουν 
 οι κατά τους τόττους συνάρ'χοντες τω μεριστώ Βαίμονι θεοί, 
 ^νόντες ήΒη το ^ιηνόμενον, άφίεσαν αυ τα μέρη του κόσμου 
 273 της αύτων ετημεΧείας. 6 Βε μεταστρεφό μένος καϊ ζυμ- 
 βάΧλων, άργτις τε καϊ τεΧευτής εναντίαν ορμήν ορμηθείς, 
 σεισμον ττοΧύν εν εαυτω ττοοών, άΧΧην αυ φθοραν ζώων 
 παντοίων άττειρ^άσατο. μετά Βε ταύτα ττροεΧθόντος ικανού 
 γ^ρονου, θορύβων τε καϊ ταρα'χης ήΒη τταυόμενος καϊ των 
 σεισμών, ^αΧήνης εττίΧαβόμενος εϊς τε τον εΐωθοτα Βρόμον 
 τον εαυτού κατακοσμού μένος ηει, εττιμεΧειαν καϊ κράτος 
 
 Β έχων αύτος των εν αντω τε καϊ εαντού, την τού Βημίονρ'γού 
 καϊ Ίτατρος άττομνημονεύων ΒίΒαγτιν εΙς Βύναμιν. κατ 
 άρχας μεν ονν άκριβεστερον άττετεΧει, τεΧεντών Βε άμβΧύ- 
 τερον. τούτων Βε αντω το σωματοειΒες της συ^κράσεως 
 αϊτιον, το της ττάΧαι ττοτε φύσεως ξύντροφον, οτι ττοΧΧής 
 ην μετεχον αταξίας ττρϊν εις τον νύν κόσμον άφικεσθαι. 
 τάρα μεν yap τού σννθεντος ττάντα καΧα κέκτηται' ηταρα 
 
 C Βε της εμττροσθεν εξεως, οσα χαΧεττα καϊ άΒι,κα εν ονρανω 
 yίyvετaL, ταύτα εξ εκείνης αντός τε εγει καϊ τοις ζώοις 
 εva7Γερyάζετaι, μετά μεν ονν τού κνβερνήτον τα ζώα 
 τρεφων εν αντω σμικρά μεν φΧαύρα, μεyάXa Βε ενετικτεν 
 άyaθά' χωριζόμενος Βε εκείνον τον εyyύτaτa χρόνον άεϊ 
 
THE POLITIC US MYTH 187 
 
 it away, until some one shall appear who is able to show 
 us credibly which way these ancients were inclined in regard 
 of knowledge and discourse: meanwhile let us speak of that 
 for the sake whereof this Tale was started, that the next part 
 of our argument may go forward. 
 
 When the time of all these men was fulfilled, and the 
 change must needs come, and of the generation of them that 
 arose out of the Earth there was none left, and every Soul had 
 rendered her tale of births, according to the number of times 
 appointed for her to fall and be sown upon the Earth, then 
 did the Governor of the Universe let go, as it were, the tiller, 
 and depart into his own" watch-tower, and Fate and inborn 
 Impulse began to cause the Universe to revolve backwards 
 again. Straightway all the gods which, in their several 
 places, bore rule together with the Great God, when they 
 knew what was done, likewise left their provinces without 
 oversight. Then was the Universe shaken as with a great 
 earthquake through his depths by reason of the concussion of 
 the reversed revolution and the strife betwixt the two con- 
 trary motions whereof the one was ending and the other 
 beginning; whereby was wrought a fresh destruction of 
 living creatures of every kind. 
 
 Thereafter, when the due time was accomplished, the 
 Universe at last ceased from tumults and confusion and 
 earthquakes, and coming into a calm, and being set in order for 
 the course wherein it useth to go, therein went, itself having 
 superintendency and dominion over itself and all that in it is, 
 calling to mind alway, as it was able, the teaching of the 
 Maker and Father of all. 
 
 At first the things which it brought forth were more 
 perfectly wrought, but at last more roughly : the cause 
 whereof was the corporeal part which was mixed in the 
 original nature of things, the which was full of confusion 
 before that it came unto the present order. From Him who 
 composed it the Universe hath all things fair and good ; but 
 from the former state thereof come all the things difiBicult and 
 unrighteous which in itself it hath, and bringeth to pass in 
 the creatures which it fashioneth. Therefore when it was with 
 the Governor, the evil cj^eatures it brought forth were few, 
 and the good were in abundance ; but when it was separated 
 
188 THE MiTHS OF PLATO 
 
 της άφεσβως κάΧΚιστα ττάντα δίογβί, ττροΐόντος Be τον 
 γρόνου καί Χηθης ε^^^ί'^νομ.ίνης iv αύτω μαΧΚον καϊ Βυνα- 
 D aT€V6i το τη<ζ τταΧαιας άναρμοστίας ττάθος, τέλευτώντος δε 
 εξανθζΐ του χρόνου καϊ σμικρά μβν τά^αθά, ττοΧΧην Be την 
 των εναντίων κρασιν iire^Kepavvv μένος iirl Βιαφθοράς 
 κίνΒννον αύτοΰ τε άφίκνεΐται καϊ των iv αντω. Βιο Βη 
 καϊ τότ ήΒη θεός 6 κοσμησας αυτόν, καθορων εν άττορίαις 
 οντά, κηΒομενος Ινα μη 'χειμασθεϊς υττο ταραγΎΐς ΒιαΧυθεΙς 
 εΙς τον της άνομοωτητος αττειρον οντά τόττον Βύτ), τταΚιν 
 εφεΒρος αυτού των ττηΒαΧίων yLyv6μεvoς, τα νοσησαντα καϊ 
 ε Χυθεντα εν ττ) καθ^ εαυτόν ττροτέρα ττερωΒω στρεψας 
 κοσμεί τε καϊ εττανορθών άθάνατον αυτόν καϊ ά^ηρων 
 άττερ^άζεταν. τούτο μεν ουν τεΚος άττάντων εϊρηταΐ' το δ* 
 εττΐ την του βασιλέως άττόΒειξιν Ικανον εκ του ττρόσθεν 
 άτΓΤομενοις του λόγου. στρεφθεντος yap αύ του κόσμου 
 την εττΐ την νυν yεvεσίv οΒόν το της ηΧικίας αΰ ττάΧιν 
 ΐστατο καϊ καινά τάναντία άττεΒίΒου τοις τότε. τα μεν 
 yap υττο σμικρότητος όXLyoυ Βεοντα ηφανίσθαι των ζώων 
 ηύξάνετο, τα δ* εκ yής vεoyεvή σώματα ττοΧια φύντα ττάΧιν 
 άτΓοθνησ κοντά εΙς yrjv κάτσει, και ταΧΧά τε ττάντα μετε- 
 274 βαΧΧεν, άτΓομιμούμενα καϊ ξυνακοΧουθουντα τω του τταντος 
 τταθηματι, καϊ Βη καϊ το της κυήσεως καϊ yεvvησεως καϊ 
 τροφής μίμημα συνείττετο τοις ττάσιν υττ άvάyκης. ου yap 
 εξήν ετ εν yrj Βι έτερων συνιστάντων φύεσθαι ζώον, άΧΧα 
 καθάττερ τω κόσμω ττροσετετακτο αυτοκράτορα είναι της 
 αύτοΰ ΊΓορείας, οΰτω Βη κατά ταύτα καϊ τοις μέρεσιν αύτοΐς 
 Βι^ αυτών, καθ' όσον οιόν τ ην, φύειν τε καϊ yεvvάv καϊ 
 τρεφειν ττροσετάττετο υττο της όμοιας άγωγ^9. ου Βε ένεκα 
 Β ο Xoyoς ώρμηκε ττάς, εττ αύτω νυν εσμεν ηΒη. ττερϊ μεν 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 189 
 
 from him, at first for a while after the separation it performed 
 all things exceeding well ; and then, as time went on, and 
 forgetfulness grew more and more within it, discord, inherent 
 from of old, gained ever greater mastery and at last burst 
 forth ; and things good that were produced being few, and the 
 admixture of the opposite sort being great, the Universe came 
 into danger of being destroyed together with all that was in it. 
 
 Wherefore, when things were come to this pass, God, who 
 fashioned this Order, perceiving that it was in distress, and 
 careful lest, being tossed in the storm of so great a tumult, it 
 should be loosed asunder and founder down into the measure- 
 less deep of Confusion, again took up His post at the helm ; 
 and having turned round that which was gone the way of 
 disease and dissolution in the former Period when the 
 Universe was left to itself, put all in order, and restored the 
 Universe to the right way, and made it exempt from death 
 and old age. 
 
 Here endeth the Tale : now let us return, and take up 
 the beginning thereof, which will suffice for our setting forth 
 of " The King." 
 
 When the Universe was turned back, and went the way 
 of this present sort of generation, then again did man's age 
 first stand still, and thereafter straightway began to bring 
 forth things new, in the order contrary to that of the former 
 period ; for those creatures which, by reason of their small- 
 ness, were all but vanished away, began to grow bigger, and 
 the bodies of men newly come forth from the Earth, which 
 were born grey-headed, died again, and went down into the 
 Earth; and all other things were likewise changed, according 
 to the changed condition of the Universe, their Example and 
 Controller ; and among these things which were of necessity 
 so changed were the Conception and Birth and Nourishment 
 of living creatures; for no longer could a living creature 
 grow in the Earth, compacted together out of his elements 
 by others, but even as it was ordained unto the Universe to 
 be master of his own path, so also was it ordained, by the like 
 law, that the parts of the Whole, of themselves, as far as might 
 be, should bring forth, and beget, and provide nourishment. 
 
 Now, therefore, are we come whither our Whole Discourse 
 was bound. 
 
190 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 yap των αΧΚων θηρίων ττολλά αν κα\ μακρά ΒίεξβΧθβΐν 
 yiyvoLTO, ef ών βκαστα καΐ δ^' α9 αίτιας μεταβάβΧηκβ' 
 7Γ€ρΙ δε ανθρώπων βρα'χυτβρα καϊ μαΧΧον ττροσήκοντα. 
 της yap τον κεκτημένου καϊ νβμοντος ημάς Βαίμονος άττερη- 
 μωθεντβς έττίμέΧβίας, των ττοΧΧων αν θηρίων, οσα χαλεττά 
 τας φύσεις ην, ά'πaypLωθevτωv, αύτοΙ δε άσθβνβΐς άνθρωττοι 
 
 C καϊ άφύΧακτοί yeyov6τeς, Βιηρττάζοντο νττ αυτών, καϊ 6Τ 
 άμή'χανοί καϊ άτεγνοί κατά τους ττρώτονς ήσαν 'χρονονς, 
 άτ€ της μεν αυτόματης τροφής έτη,ΧεΧοιττνίας, ττορίζεσθαι δε 
 ονκ βτΓίστάμβνοί ττω Βια το μηΒεμίαν αντονς γ^ρβίαν Ίτρότβρον 
 άvayκάζ€ιv. εκ τούτων ττάντων iv μeyάXaLς ήσαν άττορίαις. 
 όθεν Βή τα ττάΧαι, Χεγθεντα τταρα θεών Βώρα ήμΐν ΒεΒώρη- 
 ταί μετ άvayκaίaς δ^δαχτ}? καϊ τταίΒεύσεως, ττυρ μεν παρά 
 ΤΙρομηθεως, τεγναν Βε παρ 'Ή.φαίστου καϊ τής συντεγνου, 
 
 D σπέρματα δε αν καϊ φυτά παρ* άΧΧων καϊ πάνθ\ οπόσα 
 τον ανθρώπινον βίον συyκaτεσκεύaκεv, εκ τούτων yεyovεv, 
 επειΒή το μεν εκ θεών, όπερ ερρήθη νυν Βή, τής επιμεΧείας 
 επεΧιπεν ανθρώπους, Βι εαυτών δε εΒει την τε Bι,ayωyήv καϊ 
 την επιμεΧειαν αυτούς αυτών εγειν, καθάπερ οΧος 6 κόσμος, 
 ω ξυμμιμούμενοί καϊ ξυνεπόμενοί τον άεϊ 'χρόνον νυν μεν 
 ούτως, τότε Βε εκείνως ζώμεν τε καϊ φυόμεθα. καϊ το μεν 
 
 Ε δ^ του μύθου τεΧος εγετω, 'χρήσιμον δε αύτον ποιησόμεθα 
 προς το κατιΒεΐν, όσον ήμάρτομεν άποφηνάμενοι τον 
 βασιΧικόν τε καϊ ποΧιτικον εν τω πρόσθεν Xoyo). 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 191 
 
 As for the beasts of the field, to tell how and by what 
 causes they were changed would be a long story ; but our 
 proper concern is man, and a shorter story will suffice. 
 
 When we were bereft of the care of the god which had 
 gotten us to keep and tend, then came it to pass, because 
 the multitude of wild beasts, being fierce by nature, were 
 become more savage, and we ourselves were become weak 
 and defenceless, that we were harried by them ; and, more- 
 over, at first, we were helpless, and without the aid of the 
 arts ; for the food which grew spontaneous was now lacking, 
 and we knew not yet how to provide food, because that 
 aforetime need had not constrained us to make provision. 
 By reason of all these things were men in sore straits : where- 
 fore it came to pass that those Gifts from the Gods whereof 
 the old stories tell were bestowed upon us, together with the 
 teaching and training which were needful ; to wit, fire from 
 Prometheus, and the arts from Hephaestos and his mate ; and 
 seeds and herbs from others : yea, all things which have 
 furnished man's life were thus brought forth, ever since the 
 time when the watch kept over us by the Gods, as I said 
 just now, failed us, and it behoved us to spend our lives by 
 ourselves, caring for ourselves ; even as the whole Universe 
 must care for itself; the which we imitating and following 
 alway throughout all ages do live and grow up, now after this 
 manner, and then again after that manner. 
 
 Here endeth our Tale ; the use whereof will be to make 
 us see how wrongly we set forth the nature of the King and 
 Statesman in our former Discourse. 
 
 Before I go on to offer observations on the Politicus Myth, 
 I will supplement the foregoing translation of it by giving a 
 translation of the Myth of the Golden Age of Cronus as it 
 appears also in the Lavjs. 
 
192 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Laws 712e-714a 
 
 712 Ε ΑΘ. "Οζ/τως γα/?, ώ άριστοι, ττόλιτβιων μβτέχ^ετβ' ας 
 
 Be ώνομάκαμεν ννν, ουκ elal ττολιτβΐαι, ττοΧεων δε οικήσεις 
 713 ΒεστΓοζομένων re καϊ ΒουΧβνουσών μερβσιν εαυτών τισί, το 
 του Βεσιτότου Be εκάστη ττροσα^ορεύεται κράτος, χρήν Β , 
 εϊττερ του τοιούτου την ττοΧιν εΒει εττονομάζεσθαι, το του 
 άΧηθώς των τον νουν ε-χόντων Βεσττόζοντος θεού όνομα 
 Χέ'γεσθαι. 
 
 ΚΛ. Τ/9 δ' ό θεός; 
 
 ΑΘ. *Αρ* οΰν μύθω σμικρά γ* ^"^^ ττροσγ^ρηστεον, ει 
 μεΧΧομεν εμμεΧώς ττως ΒηΧώσαι το νυν ερωτώμενον ; 
 ούκουν 'χ^ρη ταύττ) Βράν ; 
 
 ΚΑ. ΤΙάνυ μεν ουν. 
 
 ΑΘ. Ύών yap Βη ττόΧεων, ων έμπροσθεν τάς ξυνοικη- 
 Β σεις ΒιηΧθομεν, ετι πρότερα τούτων ττάμττοΧυ Χε^^εταί τις 
 ^ΡΧν "^^ '^^^ οϊκησις ^^ε^ονεναι εττΐ Έίρόνου μάΧ^ εύΒαίμων, 
 ης μίμημα εχρυσά εστίν, ήτις των νυν άριστα οικείται» 
 * * * * ^( % 
 
 713 C φημην τοίνυν τταραΒεΒε'γμεθα της των τότε μακάριας 
 
 ζωής, ώς άφθονα τε και αυτόματα πάντ ^Ιχεν, ή Βε 
 τούτων αιτία Χέζεται τοιάΒε τις' ^ι^νωσκων ό Κ,ρόνος άρα, 
 καθάττερ ήμεΐς ΒιεΧηΧύθαμεν, ώς ανθρωπεία φύσις ούΒε μία 
 ικανή τα ανθρώπινα Βιοικουσα αυτοκράτωρ πάντα μή ούγ 
 ΰβρεώς τε καϊ άΒικίας μεστοΰσθαι, ταΰτ οΰν Βιανοούμενος 
 D εφίστη βασιΧεας τε και άρχοντας ταΐς πόΧεσιν ημών ουκ 
 ανθρώπους, άΧΧά 'γένους θειοτερου τε και άμείνονος, 
 Βαίμονας' οϊον νυν ήμεΐς Βρώμεν τοις ποιμνίοισι καϊ όσων 
 
THE MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE 
 
 Athenian Stranger. The cities whereof we just now spake 
 are not polities, or true cities, but mere dwelling-places, the 
 inhabitants whereof are slaves in subjection unto certain ones 
 among themselves ; and each one of these dwelling-places is 
 called " the government of such and such," after them that 
 be masters therein : but, if it is meet that a city should be 
 called after her masters, the True City will be called after 
 God, who verily ruleth over men of understanding. 
 
 Cleinias. And who is this God ? 
 
 Ath. I must still, for a little while, use Fable for the 
 more convenient answering of thy inquiry — what thinkest 
 thou? 
 
 Cleinias. Yea — Fable. 
 
 Ath. Before that those cities were, the inhabitation 
 whereof we have set forth in the former part of this Dis- 
 course — yea, very long time before these — it is told that there 
 was a Government and Settlement when Cronus was King ; 
 whereof the blessedness was great, and whichsoever city is 
 now ordered best is an image of that exemplar. 
 
 ^ * ^ ^ * * 
 
 This, then, is the Tale which we have received concerning 
 the blessed life of the men who lived in those days : It telleth 
 that they had all things, without stint, spontaneous, and that 
 the cause thereof was this : Cronus, saith the Tale, knowing 
 that Human Nature could in no wise be left with sole 
 authority in the administration of all things human and yet 
 not become a vessel filled with insolency and injustice, took 
 thought of the matter, and set over our cities, to be kings 
 and rulers thereof, not n^en, but those of a more divine and 
 excellent sort, to wit. Daemons ; just as we ourselves do with 
 
 193 
 
194 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ημβροί elaiv ayeXac• ου βονς βοών ovBe αί^ας alycov 
 άρ'χρντα'ζ ττοιοΰμβν αυτοΐσί τινας, άλλα ήμ€Ϊς y αυτών 
 Ββσττόζομβν, άμβίνον βκβίνων yevo^. ταυτον Βη καΐ 6 θβος 
 άρα [καϊ] φιΧάνθρωττος ών το yevo<; άμεινον ημών βφίστη 
 το τών Βαομόνων, ο Βία ττοΧλης μεν αύτοΐς ραστώνης, 
 Ε ΤΓοΧλής Β ήμΐν βΤΓίμεΧούμβνον ημών, βίρήνην Τ6 και αΙΒώ 
 καΧ Βυνομίαν καΐ άφθονίαν Βίκης Ίταρβ'χρμβνον, αστασίαστα 
 κσΧ ευΒαίμονα τα τών άνθρώττων άιτβίρ^άζετο ^ίνη. Xeyet 
 Βη καΐ νυν ούτος 6 Χο^ος αλήθεια 'χ^ρώμενος, ώ? όσων αν 
 τΓοΧεων μη θεός άλλα τις άργΎ) θνητός, ουκ εστί κακών 
 αύτοΐς ούΒε ττονων άνάφυξις* άλλα μιμεΐσθαυ ΒεΙν ημάς 
 οίεται ττάση μηχανή τον εττΐ του Κρόνου Χε^όμενον βίον, 
 καϊ όσον εν ήμΐν αθανασίας ενεστι, τούτω ττειθ ο μένους 
 714 Βημοσία καϊ ΙΒία τάς τ οΙκήσεις καΐ τας ττόΧεις Βίοοκεΐν, 
 την του νου Βιανομήν επονομάζοντας νόμον. 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 195 
 
 our cattle and flocks — for we set not oxen over oxen, or goats 
 over goats, but we ourselves rule over them, being of a race 
 more excellent than theirs. In like manner God, they say, 
 of his loving-kindness toward men, set over us the race of 
 Daemons, which is more excellent than ours ; and they, to 
 their own great content and to ours, caring for us, and 
 providing for us peace, and modesty, and good government, 
 and justice without stint, made the nations of mankind 
 peaceable and happy. 
 
 This Tale, then, hath in it truth, inasmuch as it signifieth 
 that whichsoever city hath not God, but a mortal man, for 
 ruler, hath no way of escape from evils and troubles : where- 
 fore, according to the admonition of the Tale, must we by all 
 means make our life like unto the life which was when 
 Cronus was King ; and in so far as that which is Immortal 
 dwelleth in us, must we be obedient unto the voice thereof in 
 all our doings private and public, and govern our households 
 and cities according to Law, which, being interpreted, is the 
 Award of Reason} 
 
 ^ This Myth ought to be taken in close connection not only with the Politicus 
 Myth, but with the Discourse of Diotima, in the Symposium, and the doctrine of 
 Daemons set forth in that Discourse ; for which see pp. 434 fF. infra. 
 
196 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Observations on the Politicus Myth 
 
 I cannot do better at the outset than refer the reader for 
 the general characteristics of the Politicus Myth to Jowett's 
 Introduction to the Statesman {Dialogues of Plato), where his 
 admirable remarks, indeed, leave little to be added. The 
 philosophical import of the Myth, it will be gathered from 
 Jowett's remarks, consists in its presentation of the " distinc- 
 tions between God causing and permitting evil, and between 
 his more or less immediate government of the world." 
 Interesting observations will also be found on the art with 
 which Plato gives verisimilitude to his own Myth " by adopt- 
 ing received traditions (as the tradition about the sun having 
 originally risen in the West and that about the γτ/γεζ^ε??) — 
 traditions of which he pretends to find an explanation in his 
 own larger conceptions." We have had instances of this art 
 in the Platonic Myths already examined, which we have found 
 securing credit to themselves by explaining not only old 
 traditional Myths, but the facts and doctrines of " modern 
 science " ; and we have found the same art employed by 
 Dante. 
 
 Having referred to Jowett's Introduction ^ for a general 
 view of this Myth, I will now add some observations on special 
 points. 
 
 The doctrine of periodical terrestrial ''catastrophes," uni- 
 versal or local, leaving on each occasion a few scattered 
 survivors to build up society afresh, mythologically explained 
 in the Politicus, was part of the " science " of Plato's day,^ and 
 was afterwards a prominent tenet of the Peripatetics.^ 
 
 It was also " scientific " in Plato's day to explain at least 
 the general course of terrestrial phenomena as caused by the 
 motion of the Hea\^ns. It is thus that the phenomena of 
 
 ^ I would also refer to Grote's Plato, ii. 480, note s — a long and instructive 
 note ; and to Stallbaum's Prolegomena to the Politicus. 
 2 Laws, iii. 676 ff. 
 ' See Newman's notes on Arist. Pol. ii. 5. 1269 a 5 and 6. 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 197 
 
 yeveaL<; και φθορά in this sublunary region are accounted for 
 by Aristotle.^ 
 
 Putting together the occurrence of terrestrial catastrophes 
 (cf. Tim. 22 £f.) and the influence of the motion of the 
 Heavens, both vouched for by " science," Plato imagines the 
 catastrophes as shocks produced by sudden changes in the 
 direction of the motion. The western rising of the sun in the 
 Atreus Myth may have suggested this explanation to him ; 
 or he may have known the Egyptian tradition recorded 
 by Herodotus (ii. 142), that during eleven thousand three 
 hundred and forty years of Egyptian history the sun on four 
 occasions altered his course, " twice rising where he now sets 
 and twice setting where he now rises." Although another 
 rationale of the Egyptian tradition (or of Herodotus's version 
 of it) has been given,^ I venture to suggest that whereas East 
 is left and West is right as one faces the mid-day sun in the 
 northern hemisphere, while East is right and West is left to 
 the spectator in the southern hemisphere, the "Egyptian 
 tradition " was awkwardly built upon the tale of some traveller 
 coming from south of the equator, who said truly that he had 
 seen the sun rise on his right hand and set on his left. 
 
 II 
 
 Zeller {Plato, Eng. Transl. p. 383, n. 44) says, " Of course 
 (cf. Tim. 36 E, and elsewhere) Plato is not in earnest in 
 supposing that God from time to time withdraws from the 
 governnient of the world." 
 
 Since the supposition of God's intermittent agency is made 
 in a Myth, Plato is certainly not " in earnest " with it, in the 
 sense of laying it down dogmatically as a scientific axiom. 
 But is he more " in earnest " with the supposition of the 
 continuous agency of God in the Timaeus ? That supposition 
 is equally part of a Myth ; Timaeus ipse totus mythicus est.^ 
 The truth is that, however Plato represents God — and he 
 
 Ϊ Be Gen. et Corr. ii. 10, 336 a 26, and cf. Zeller's Aristotle, Eng. Transl. i. 
 580 ff. 
 
 2 See Rawlinson's note ad Im. 
 
 ^ Couturat, de Platonis Mythis, p. 32. 
 
 / 
 
198 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 sometimes represents him in immense cosmic outlines, some- 
 times on a smaller scale and more anthropomorphically — the 
 representation is always for the imagination, mythical. And 
 it ought not to be forgotten that the supposition of God's 
 intermittent agency is advanced in the Politicus in order to 
 explain (mythologically, of course) the fact which Plato does 
 not shut his eyes to even in the Timaeus, where he supposes 
 (still in Myth) the continuity of God's government — the fact 
 of the existence of evil, both physical and moral, in a world 
 supposed to be governed by God. In maintaining the exist- 
 ence of evil Plato is certainly " in earnest." 
 
 It is worth noting that the representation given by the 
 Politicus Myth of the opposition between God and Matter — 
 good and evil — as an opposition of motions is common to the 
 Myth with the astronomy of Plato's day ; but whereas the 
 Politicus Myth makes motion in God's direction alternate 
 with motion in the world's direction, astronomical theory 
 makes the two motions go on for ever simultaneously, i.e. 
 the eternal motion of the whole Cosmos from East to West 
 carries round the inner spheres, whose own motions take place 
 from West to East. 
 
 For a full discussion of the astronomy of the Politicus 
 Myth I would refer the reader to Mr. Adam's RepuUic, vol. ii. 
 295 if. Mr. Adam's view is that the two cycles (the motion 
 in God's direction, and that in the opposite direction) are of 
 equal length, and that each of them represents a Great Year 
 — the Great Year being 36,000 years. 
 
 Ill 
 
 To ηηίνον ηΒη ττάν άνηΚωτο yevo^ (Politicus, 272 d). 
 The " Kesurrection " of the Politicus Myth and " Metempsy- 
 chosis " may be regarded as parallel products of imagination. 
 Metempsychosis assumes a fixed number of souls created once 
 for all and continuing always in existence. New souls are not 
 created ; the souls which animate the bodies of men in each 
 successive generation are always souls which had been in- 
 carnate in former generations. In Pep. 611a, Plato ex- 
 
THE POLITIGUS MYTH 199 
 
 pressly lays it down that the number of souls in existence is 
 always the same without augmentation or diminution.^ This 
 tenet involved in Metempsychosis Plato shares with the 
 aborigines of Australia. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say : ^ 
 
 The idea is firmly held that the child is not the direct result 
 of intercourse^ — that it may come without this, which merely, as it 
 were, prepares the mother for the reception and birth of an already 
 formed spirit child who inhabits one of the local totem centres. . . . 
 In the native mind the value of the Churinga (stone or wooden 
 objects lodged in a cave or other storehouse, near which women 
 do not pass) lies in the fact that each one of them is intimately 
 associated with, and is indeed the representative of, one of the 
 Alcheringa ancestors, with the attributes of which it is endowed. 
 AVhen the spirit part has gone into a woman, and a child has, as a 
 result, been born, then that living child is the re-incarnation of 
 that particular spirit individual.^ 
 
 As Metempsychosis makes the same soul, so Eesurrection 
 makes the same body, serve more than one life. There is a 
 store of old bodies, as there is of souls, upon which a new 
 generation draws. The store of souls assumed by Metempsy- 
 chosis is never exhausted, being recruited as fast as it is drawn 
 upon ; but the store of adult bodies in the " Eesurrection " of 
 the Politicus Myth is at last exhausted, for each adult body, 
 when in its turn it rises from the dead, grows smaller and 
 smaller till it becomes the body of an infant and vanishes 
 away. 
 
 One might develop Plato's myth, and say that it is these 
 vanished infants which reappear after the manner of ordinary 
 
 1 Cf. Rohde, Fs^Jche, ii. 279. 
 
 ^ The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 265. 
 
 ^ Cf. Myer and Nutt's Voyage of Bran, ii. 82, on the widespread idea of con- 
 ception, without male intervention, through swallowing a worm in a drink, or 
 through some other means. 
 
 ^ Spencer and Gillen's Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 138. Before 
 going to press I have not had an opportunity of seeing Messrs. Spencer and 
 Gillen's new book, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, but 1 transcribe 
 the following sentences from a notice of it in the Athenaeum (July 9, 1904) : — 
 "These tribes believe that in every child the soul of a mythical Alcheringa 
 ancestor of a given totem is re-incarnated. These totem souls haunt the places, 
 marked by a tree or rock, where the ancestors 'went into the ground.' There 
 the dying ancestors left stone amulets of a type familiar in Europe and America, 
 styled churinga. ΛVhen a child is born his ancestral churinga is sought, and 
 often is found near the place where the totem spirit entered his mother." Are 
 the "articles belonging to th• deceased," referred to p. 450 infra, parallel to 
 these Australian amulets ? 
 
200 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 birth, and grow back into adult size, when the revolution of 
 the Cosmos is reversed. This would be in accordance with 
 the belief, by no means confined to such primitive minds as 
 those of the Australian aborigines, observed by Messrs. 
 Spencer and Gillen, that intercourse is after all not the real 
 cause of the birth of a child : that the child — hardly dis- 
 tinguished as " soul " and " body " — is one who returns from 
 the world of the departed and enters into the mother. The 
 relationship between such a view of the nature of procreation 
 and the custom of counting kinship through the mother, not 
 through the father, is of course obvious. 
 
 That the notion of Eesurrection, then, recommends itself 
 to the imagination in much the same way as the notion of 
 Metempsychosis is what I wish to suggest to the student of 
 the Politicus Myth. The two notions are closely allied and, 
 indeed, tend to coalesce. The distinction between soul and 
 body is a hard one for the imagination to maintain ; thus it 
 is very imperfectly maintained in the following instance: 
 " The Jesuits relate that among the Hurons there were special 
 ceremonies for little children who died at less than two 
 months old; their bodies were not put in coffins in the 
 cemeteries, but buried upon the pathway in order that they 
 might enter into the body of some passing woman and so be 
 born again ; " ^ and it is practically given up in the Christian 
 Eschatology which insists on the ultimate union of the soul 
 with its risen body. 
 
 lY 
 
 My remarks in this section will serve as introduction to 
 the " Creation Myths," which we shall examine next. 
 
 The Politicus Myth may be distinguished as Aetiological 
 from the Eschatological Myths which we have examined 
 in the Phaedo, Gorgias, and RepuUic. The Eschatological 
 Myths are concerned immediately with the Ideas of Eeason. 
 They set forth the Idea of Soul as subject of God's govern- 
 
 1 J. E. King on "Infant Burial," in Classical Review, Feb. 1903, p. 83. 
 The souls of infants seem always to have caused difficulty ; see Rohde, PsycJie, 
 ii. 411-413, on Άωροι, and Adam's note on Rep. 615 c, των 5k evdos Ύβνομένων καΐ 
 OXiyov xpbvov βιούντων ττέρι άλλα ^Xeyev ουκ άξια μνήμην. 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 201 
 
 ment in the Cosmos, by depicting the future vicissitudes of 
 the ψνχη, not, of course, without reference to its past out of 
 which its future grows. The Aetiological Myth, on the other 
 hand, may set forth either Ideas of Eeason or Categories of 
 the Understanding. Thus the Timaeus (which is one great 
 Aetiological Myth) sets forth the Ideas of Soul and Cosmos, 
 by tracing their imaginatively constructed objects back to 
 causes which are unfolded in an account of the Creation of the 
 ψνχη and of the material world. The Phaedrus Myth, again, 
 sets forth the Categories of the Understanding aetiologicaUy, 
 by showing that the a priori conditions of our knowledge of 
 sensible phenomena are abiding mental impressions caused by 
 a prenatal vision of the Eternal Forms in the ύττβρονράνως 
 τότΓος. There are other myths which cannot be called either 
 Aetiological or Eschatological, but are merely Expository 
 either of Ideas of Eeason or of Categories of the Understanding 
 — thus Diotima's Myth is an imaginative exposition of the 
 Idea of Soul as Love of Truth and Immortality, while 
 the functions of the Understanding are described imagi- 
 natively in the Timaeus as revolutions like those of the 
 Cosmos. 
 
 The Politicus Myth, setting forth as it does the Idea of 
 Soul as subject of God's government in the Cosmos, is Aetio- 
 logical in supplying a cause for the Evil which exists in the 
 world and man's life under God's government. 
 
 How does Plato think that we are helped out of the 
 profound difficulty about the existence of Evil by an Aetio- 
 logical Myth of Changing World -periods ? The answer, if we 
 could give it, would be a complete theory of the influence 
 which Aetiological Myths exercise over the mind of man. 
 Here is the greatest difficulty of morals ; and it is easily solved 
 by a fantastic story of the origin of the thing which makes 
 the difficulty ! 
 
 Let me try to explain how Plato comes to attach such 
 value to this Aetiological Myth. First, Plato thinks that the 
 immensity of the difficulty is best illustrated in this way — as 
 the tragic import of a great crisis on the stage or in real life 
 is sometimes illustrated by the trifling comment or behaviour 
 of some one present — it may be of a child. Plato thinks that 
 his Myth, with its childish unconsciousness of difficulty, is 
 
202 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 valuable as enhancing our sense of the immensity of the diffi- 
 culty, and so helping us to remove the difficulty — the very 
 difficulty which it makes appear more immense. When we 
 know the real cause of any particular difficulty of detail we 
 have got a grip of it, as it were, and can generally overcome 
 it. We can never get this sort of grip of the difficulty about 
 the existence of Evil ; for it is not a particular difficulty with 
 a particular discoverable solution, but a universal difficulty — 
 a contradiction inherent in the very nature of the system 
 under which we live — it puzzles us, and paralyses us the more 
 we try to remove it αιτίας Χο^ισμω — by particular explana- 
 tions, more nostro. But Plato's Myth puts the difficulty once 
 for all in its true place — exhibits it, in its immensity, as uni- 
 versal ; and the moral is — You cannot solve it as you solve a 
 particular difficulty. Do not try to do so. See how immense 
 it is ! " Put it by " — 
 
 The cloud of mortal destiny, 
 Others will front it fearlessly — 
 But who, like him, will put it by ? 
 
 This is the first part of the answer which I venture 
 to ofter to the question, How does Plato think that 
 we are helped out of a profound difficulty by a childish 
 Myth? 
 
 The second part of the answer I venture to state as 
 follows : It is very hard to " put it by " — impossible unless 
 one fancies — it is enough merely to fancy — that one has 
 somehow, at least partly, solved the difficulty which one is 
 asked to " put by." An attempt to solve a fundamental or 
 universal difficulty logically, by a thin process of reasoning, 
 can only end in a sense of failure ; but a childish Myth, touch- 
 ing, as it is apt to do, a vast complex of latent sensibilities, 
 may awaken a feeling of vague satisfaction. A childish Myth 
 may thus, after all, seem to solve a fundamental difficulty, so 
 far as to warrant one in " putting it by " — the one important 
 thing being that we should " put it by," and act, not think 
 about it and hesitate. I suggest, then, that Plato's love of 
 the Aetiological Myth is due to the instinctive sympathy of 
 his many-sided genius with this — shall I call it weakness ? — 
 of human nature, which finds, amid doubts and difficulties. 
 
THE POL IT reus MYTH 203 
 
 some satisfaction in fantastic explanation. Let me illustrate 
 this weakness, with which I suggest that Plato is in artistic 
 sympathy, by an instance of the use of the Aetiological Myth 
 in Finnish mythology — by the Story of the Birth of Iron in 
 the Kalewala. But first let me say a few words about the 
 Kalewala by way of introduction to this story. 
 
 The great Finnish Epic, the Kalewala, was pieced together 
 about seventy years ago by Lonnrot out of Eunes or Cantos 
 which had been, as they still are, sung separately by the 
 popular Laujola, or Minstrels. The Eune, or Canto, is the 
 unit of Finnish poetry, and may be fairly described as an 
 Aetiological Myth growing out of the magician's charm- 
 formula. 
 
 The chief personages in the Kalewala are not national 
 kings and warriors, as in other epics, but great magicians ; and 
 the interest of the poem, or poems, is connected mainly with 
 the manner in which these great magicians show their power 
 over Nature, and Spirits, and Men. According to the Finnish 
 belief, everything done in life, even the simplest thing done 
 by the most ordinary person, has its appropriate charm- 
 formula — is successfully done in virtue of the accompaniment 
 of the suitable word or words — e.g. there is a word for success- 
 fully laying the keel of a boat, and another for fixing the ribs, 
 and so on. If ordinary acts depend on the utterance of the 
 proper words, much more do the extraordinary acts of great 
 magicians. Wainamoinen, the chief magician-hero of the 
 Kalewala Eunes, when he was building his magic boat forgot 
 three necessary words, and wandered over the whole Earth, and 
 at last found his way into the World of the Dead, in his search 
 for these lost words. Now these mighty words, which are the 
 arms wielded by the magician-hero, are mighty in that they 
 contain the cause of the thing on which he exercises his power. 
 He is confronted with difficulties and dangers in his adventur- 
 ous career, and it is by telling a difficult or dangerous thing 
 its origin that he conquers it. If it is a wound to be cured 
 it is the Birth of Iron that the magician must know and 
 relate {Kal. ix. 29 ff.). If it is a monstrous bear that he 
 has to overcome he must first tell the story of the Origin of 
 the Bear {Kal. xlvi. 355). If it is a disease that he has to 
 exorcise, he can only do tnat by telling the disease its hidden 
 
204 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 name, and the place from which it came, and the way by 
 which it came {Kal. xlv. 23). If it is a snake-bite to be 
 healed, he must know the Ancestry of Snakes {Kal. xxvi. 695). 
 Thus, out of the charm-formula of the magician-hero the Aetio- 
 logical Myth arises — especially when the singer of the Kune, 
 identifying himself, as he often does, with his magician-hero, 
 uses the first person. 
 
 The Kalewala is a loosely connected collection of Cantos, 
 in which magicians are the heroes, and charms the weapons, 
 the charms being words which reveal the nature and origin 
 of the things or persons overcome — magic words which the 
 Finnish Kune -singers expanded into elaborate Aetiological 
 Myths. Among other races it is the prayer at the sacrifice 
 or offering, as Comparetti ^ observes, which is developed into 
 the Hymn, and then into the Myth ; it is only among the 
 Finns that the charm-formula is so developed. Sorcery, not 
 as elsewhere ritual and custom, is here the germ of the 
 Aetiological Myth. 
 
 The Story of the Birth of Iron^ 
 
 Wainamoinen, with blood streaming from a wound in his knee 
 made by his axe when he was building a boat, hurries from place 
 to place in his sledge, asking if any one knows the mighty words 
 which will heal the " lion's outrage." No one knows them. At 
 last he comes to a house in which there is a little grey-bearded 
 old man by the fireside, who, in answer to Wainamoinen's ques- 
 tion, calls out to him as he sits in his sledge at the door : 
 "Wilder streams, greater rivers than this have ere now been 
 tamed by three words of the High Creator." Wainamoinen rose 
 out of his sledge and crossed the courtyard and entered the 
 house. A silver cup and a golden tankard were brought and 
 soon were full of blood, and overflowing. The little old man 
 cried out from the fireside : " Speak, who art thou amongst men, 
 of what people and nation, that already seven great basins and 
 eight tubs are filled with thy blood ? All magic words I know, 
 
 ^ Der Kalewala, oder die traditionelle Poesie der Finnen, p. 169 (German 
 edition, 1892). 
 
 2 I have translated this story (with considerable compression and omission) 
 from the German version of the Kaleioala by Hermann Paul, published at 
 Helsinglors in 1885 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the first publi- 
 cation of the Finnish Epic. 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 205 
 
 save only that one word, which declareth how Iron was fashioned 
 how the rusty metal arose." 
 
 Then Wainamoinen answered and said : "I myself know the 
 source of Iron, and the first beginning of Steel. 
 
 " Heaven is the primaeval mother. Water is the eldest child, 
 Iron is the youngest of the brethren. Fire is the middle son. 
 
 "Ukko, the Almighty Creator, the Ruler of the wide 
 world, separated Heaven from Water, separated dry Land from 
 Water, before that Iron grew up, before that the rusty metal 
 arose. 
 
 "The Creator of Heaven, Ukko, rubbed together his right 
 hand and his left, and pressed his two hands together, and laid 
 them both upon his knee ; and straightway there came into being 
 three fair women, lovely daughters of Nature, who caused Iron to 
 come into being and the blue flashing Steel. 
 
 "Lightly the fair women floated away by the edge of the 
 clouds, and their swelling breasts were full of milk. The milk ran 
 down over the earth continually, over the fields, over the fens, 
 over the still waters and lakes. Black it flowed from the breasts 
 of the eldest, white in bright drops it fell from the breasts of the 
 second, red from the breasts of the youngest. She from whom 
 the black drops fell caused the soft Iron to come forth, she from 
 whom the white drops fell produced the glancing Steel, she from 
 whom the red drops fell brought forth the brittle Iron. 
 
 " After a while Iron would a- wandering go, to visit his elder 
 brother Fire. But Fire was evilly minded towards him, and 
 blazed up, and would have consumed him ; but Iron escaped out 
 of the hands of his fierce brother, out of the mouth of the 
 devouring Fire, and hid himself under the earth, in the bog, in 
 the deep-hidden spring, on the wide expanse of the fen where 
 the swans build their nests, on the ridge of the mighty cliff where 
 the eagle watches over his brood. 
 
 "So Iron lay deep in the moist fen, kept himself there for 
 two years hidden ; yea, even in the third year lay quiet between 
 the crooked trunks, under the rotten birch-leaves. 
 
 " Yet could he not escape out of his brother's hands ; again 
 must he return into the power of wicked Fire, and be forged into 
 tools and weapons. 
 
 " One day the Wolf ran over the fen, one day the Bear trotted 
 growling over the moor. The footprints of the Wolf were plain, 
 the Bear left his track behind ; and lo ! there the rusty Iron 
 appeared, there the glancing Steel, in the broad footprints of the 
 Wolf, in the Bear's great track. 
 
 " Ilmarinen, the cunning Smith, came into the world, was born 
 on a coal-heap, grew up on the murky hill, with a hammer in his 
 hand, and little tongs undSr his arm. In the night was he born. 
 
206 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 and on the morrow went forth to seek a smithy and a place for 
 his bellows. He saw a piece of fenland, a wet morass ; he went 
 near to look at it ; and there he built him his smithy and put up 
 his bellows. 
 
 " Soon he marked the footprints of the Wolf and the track of 
 the Bear on the fen, and saw the rusty Iron, found the Steel, 
 discovered in the Wolf's broad footprints, in the Bear's great 
 track. 
 
 " Then spake the Smith : ' unhappy Iron ! What is 
 happened unto thee ! What unworthy place is this that thou 
 hast, under the Wolfs heavy feet, in the track of the clumsy 
 Bear 1 ' 
 
 "Thereafter he bethought him, and whispered to himself; 
 ' What would come of it, if I cast the Iron into the Fire, into the 
 sparkling glow ? ' 
 
 " Then did the anguish of the fear of death take hold of the 
 Iron, Avhen it heard the terrible name of Fire. 
 
 " But the Smith lifted up his voice, and said : ' Fear not, 
 poor Iron ; Fire hurteth not his brother. If thou enterest into 
 the smithy, and layest thyself down in the furnace, thou shalt 
 rise up again more beautiful, thou shalt become a sharp sword for 
 men, a useful instrument for women.' 
 
 " The Smith took the Iron, and cast it on the glowing hearth, 
 and on the first day stirred up the flame, and yet again on the 
 second day, and the third. Slowly the glowing Iron was melted, 
 and boiled up in bubbles, and spread itself, like leavened dough, 
 within the flames of the mighty Fire. 
 
 " Then cried the Iron in anguish : ' Smith, have com- 
 passion upon me ; take me out of the burning Fire, out of the hot 
 flaming glow ! ' 
 
 " Then answered the Smith : 'If I take thee now out of the 
 Fire, thou mightest grow up to be evil, and all too dangerous ; 
 thou mightest murder thy nearest-of-kin, regarding not thine own 
 brother.' 
 
 " Then Iron lifted up his voice, and swore a great oath, and 
 said : ' There are still trees enough to fell, and stones enough to 
 break : never will I hurt my brother, or do harm unto my nearest- 
 of-kin. Better and fairer and more honourable 'tis to live as 
 companion and servant of man, to be his friend, the weapon of 
 his hand, than to be the enemy of one's kinsman, the destroyer of 
 one's brother.' 
 
 " Then took Ilmarinen the Smith, the famous Smith, the poor 
 Iron out of the Fire, and laid it on the anvil, and hammered it 
 till it was bent to use ; and therefrom he made sharp tools, axes 
 and swords, and implements of every sort. 
 
 " Yet something was still lacking to the Iron, the Steel still 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 207 
 
 needed something. The Iron's tongue lacked hardness, his mouth 
 lacked the due sharpness. The Iron could not be forged hard, 
 unless Water wetted it. 
 
 " The renowned Smith bethought him what he should do ; 
 and then he sprinkled a little ash upon Water, and dissolved it 
 therein, and made a pungent bath, for to give hardness to the 
 Iron and strength to the Steel. 
 
 " Carefully did he prove the Water with his tongue, and then 
 said : ' The Water is not yet made lit to harden the rusty metal 
 and the blue glancing Steel.' 
 
 " Behold a Bee came flying over the grass, sporting high and 
 low on bright wings, flitting and humming round him. 
 
 " Then spake the renowned Smith : ' Here I Busy Bee ! 
 Bring me honey on thy wing, bring hither the noble juice, suck it 
 from the cups of the flowers, to give the right hardness to the 
 Iron, to give strength to the Steel.' 
 
 " Hiisi's evil bird, the Wasp, overheard the talk, as she 
 peeped down from the roof. She gave heed secretly to all, she 
 saw the rusty metal prepared, she saw the glancing Steel brought 
 forth. 
 
 "In haste away flew the Wasp from thence, and gathered 
 together Hiisi's horrors ; she brought the black venom of the 
 serpent, and the deadly poison of the adder, and the bitter froth 
 of worms, and the corroding liquor of the toad, to give hardness to 
 the Iron and strength to the Steel. 
 
 " Ilmarinen, the cunning workman, the renowned Smith, thought 
 that the Busy Bee had brought him honey, had given him the 
 noble juice ; and he said : ' Now is the bath right to harden the 
 rusty metal, to give strength to the blue Steel.' 
 
 " In the bath he dipped the Iron, without heed he cast the metal 
 therein, when he had drawn it out of the Fire, out of the glowing 
 forge. 
 
 " Then came it to pass that Iron was made hurtful, and did rend 
 Honour even as a dog rendeth flesh, and broke the sacred oath 
 which he sware, and murdered his own brother, and bit wounds into 
 him with sharp mouth, and opened paths for the blood, and poured 
 it out in foaming stream." 
 
 The little old man at the fireside cried aloud, and rocked his 
 head to and fro, and sang : " Oh, now I know the Beginning of Iron, 
 now I know who drave it to evil. Woe unto thee, thou luckless 
 Iron ! woe unto thee, thou deceitful Steel ! Poor metal, taken 
 captive by witchcraft ! Is it thence that thou art sprung ? Is it 
 for this reason that thou art become a terror and hast too great 
 mastery ? 
 
 " Who moved thee to wickedness, who drave thee to treason 1 
 Was it thy Father or thy^other % Was thy eldest Brother guilty 
 
208 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 of this ? Was it thy youngest Sister, or some Friend, who coun- 
 selled thee and turned thee to the evil deed ? 
 
 "Neither Father nor Mother nor eldest Brother nor youngest 
 Sister nor any Friend gave thee this counsel. Thyself hast thou 
 done this wickedness, thyself hast thou accomplished the bloody 
 deed. 
 
 " Iron ! Look at this wound ! Heal the evil thou hast done ere 
 I go in anger with complaint against thee to thy Mother. The 
 sorrow of the old woman thy Mother is increased if her child 
 turneth himself to evil and doeth wickedness. 
 
 " Leave off, and run no more, thou foaming blood ! hold in thy 
 course, spout forth no more in long-curved bow, bespattering my 
 head and breast ! Stand like a wall immovable, like a fence, like 
 the sedge by the water's side, like the grass in the slimy fen ! 
 Stand like the rocks upon the firm earth, like the cliff in the raging 
 storm ! 
 
 " If thou heedest not these words, I will devise other means : 
 hither do I call Hiisi's Kettle to seethe the foaming blood therein, 
 to make hot the red juice, so that not a drop shall flow away, so 
 that the purple gore shall run down thereinto, and wet not the 
 earth nor stream foaming over the ground. 
 
 " And if power be withheld from me myself to stay the endless 
 flood, to become master of the wild stream, know that in Heaven 
 there liveth a Father, a God dwelling above the clouds, who is the 
 mightiest leech for the closing-up of bleeding wounds. 
 
 " Ukko, High Creator, Everlasting God of Heaven, hear me 
 when I call unto thee in time of need ! Lay thy soothing hand, 
 thy finger which bringeth healing, on the w^ound, and be as a sure 
 lock to close it. 
 
 " Take, Lord, a healing leaf, spread a water-lily leaf to cover the 
 opening, stay the strong current of the blood, so that it stain not 
 my cheeks nor stream over my garments." 
 
 Therewith the old man shut the mouth of the wound, stayed 
 the swift course of the blood; then sent he his son into the smithy 
 to prepare a salve of the finest threads of the grass, of a thousand 
 herbs of the field, of the flowers whence honey, -healing balm, 
 droppeth. 
 
 The boy brought the salve to his Father, saying : " Here is 
 strong healing salve, able to cement stones together into one 
 rock." 
 
 The Father proved it with his tongue, and found it good ; 
 and therewith he anointed the wounded man, saying : " Not 
 by my own power do I this, but only through the power of the 
 Highest." 
 
 Then he bound up the wound with silken bands, saying : 
 " May the silk of the Eternal Father, the bands of the Almighty 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 209 
 
 Creator, bind up this wound. Be gracious, Ο Heavenly Father, 
 look down and help, put an end unto the bitter anguish, heal this 
 wound without the sharpness of pain." 
 
 Then did Wainamoinen, on a sudden, feel that he was healed ; 
 and soon thereafter the wound grew together, and was closed.^ 
 
 A Myth like this of the Birth of Iron, amplified, indeed, 
 and embellished by poetical art, but originally inspired by the 
 childish belief in the value of words which set forth the cause, 
 helps us, I think, to understand Plato's employment of the 
 Aetiological Myth. Confronted by some profound difficulty, 
 he lays it, or " puts it by," by means of a fanciful account of 
 the origin of the state of things which presents the difficulty. 
 He seems to feel that an Aetiological Myth is " a comfortable 
 thing," ^ and a charm to conjure with when one is hard 
 pressed. 
 
 The transition is easy from the point which we have now 
 reached to Plato's Creation Myths — his Aetiological Myths 
 par excellence. These are the Timaeus (which is one great 
 Myth) and the Myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus in the 
 Protagoras (320 C fp.). 
 
 In distinguishing these Myths as Aetiological fropi the 
 strictly Eschatological Myths of the Phaedo, Gorgias, and the 
 Republic, I do not ignore the eschatological prospect which is 
 presented in them, especially in the Timaeus ; but aetiological 
 retrospect is what is really characteristic of them. It is the 
 origin of the Universe, and of Man, Soul and Body, not the 
 future life of Man's Soul, that these Myths are properly 
 concerned with. They set forth the Ideas of Keason, Soul, 
 Cosmos, and God, aetiologically in a Vision of Creation ; and 
 supply, moreover, a mythological deduction of Categories of the 
 Understanding and Moral Virtues, which lies outside the scope 
 of the strictly Eschatological Myths ; i.e. they deduce Categories 
 and Virtues from their causes in the nature of God and the 
 make of the Cosmos — they picture for the imagination the 
 orderly constitution of nature as expressing the wisdom and 
 goodness of God, and explain — always for the iinagination — 
 the harmony subsisting between that constitution and the 
 faculties of the Soul. Thus in Timaeus 40 E— 42 Ε the a 
 
 1 Kalewala, Runes 8 and 9, vol. i. pp. 95-124, German version by Hermann 
 Paul (Helsingfors, 1885). • 
 
 * " Prisms are also comfortable things " (Bacon, Nat. Hist. cent. x. 960). 
 
 Ρ 
 
210 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 priori conditions of thought, the modes in which the Under- 
 standing brings order into the manifold of sense-experience, 
 are set forth as due to impressions received by the Soul in its 
 speculative journey round the Heavens, when it rode on its 
 star-chariot, and saw the eternal laws of the Universe, and 
 learned to move in orbits of rational thought, similar to those 
 which rule the stars. 
 
 It will be convenient to begin our study of the Creation 
 Myths with the Protagoras Myth. It is on a small scale, and 
 by looking at it first the eye of imagination may perhaps be 
 prepared for the contemplation of the vast Timaeus. Although 
 it is only a small part of the Timaeus that the limits of this 
 work allow me to translate and comment on, I would ask the 
 reader to regard the whole book as one great Myth in which 
 the Ideas of Soul, Cosmos, and God are set forth in great 
 shapes for our wonder — in which the relation of the Created 
 Soul — "World Soul and Human Soul — to the Creator, the 
 relation of the Human Soul to the Human Body, the Origin 
 of Evil, the Hope of Salvation, and other things which con- 
 cern our peace, are made visible. The Timaeus is a Myth, not 
 a scientific treatise, although it was its fortune from the very 
 first to be treated as if it were the latter. No other work of 
 Plato's was so much read and commented on in antiquity, and 
 throughout the Middle Age, as the Timaeus ; and that chiefly 
 because it was regarded as a compendium of natural science, 
 all the more valuable because its " natural science " was not 
 presented as something apart by itself, but " framed in a theo- 
 logical setting." Aristotle, of course, treats it au pied de la 
 lettre} With the Christian Platonists it took rank as a 
 scientific and theological authority along with the Book of 
 Genesis.^ Dante's references to Plato's actual text are, I 
 believe, all to passages contained in the Timaeus^ 
 
 ^ The reader may test the justice of this statement by referring to the 
 passages quoted in the Index Arist. s.v. "Tiywatos Platonis dialogue"; and see 
 Zeller, Plato, p. 344, Eng. Transl. 
 
 2 "Numenius the Platonist speaks out plainly concerning his master : What 
 is Plato but Moses Atticus ? " (Henry More's Conjectura Cabbalistica, Preface, p. 3 ; 
 ed. 1662.) It was practically as author of the Timaeus that Plato was ''Moses 
 Atticus" Jowett {Dialogues of Plato, Introd, to Timaeus) has some interesting 
 remarks on the text — ** The influence which the Timaeus has exercised upon 
 posterity is partly due to a misunderstanding." 
 
 ' See Moore's Studies in Dante, first series, pp. 156 if., and Toynbee's Dante 
 Dictionary, arts. *' Platone " and " Timeo'^." 
 
THE POLITICUS MYTH 211 
 
 Like the Politicus Myth, the Protagoras Myth is not 
 spoken by Socrates, and Protagoras, the speaker, like the 
 Eleatic Stranger in the Politicus, says that a Fable will come 
 well from himself, an older man addressing younger men — 
 Socrates and the others present. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 
 
 Context 
 
 The scene of the Protagoras is the house of Callias, a 
 
 wealthy Athenian gentleman, to which Socrates takes his friend 
 
 Hippocrates, that he may introduce him to the celebrated teacher 
 
 of Rhetoric — or the Art of getting on in Life — Protagoras, who 
 
 happens to he staying with Callias. Besides Protagoras they 
 
 find two other Sophists of repute there, Hippias and Prodicus, 
 
 also Critias and Alcihiades. Hippocrates wishes to hecome a 
 
 pupil of Protagoras; and Socrates, after communicating his 
 
 friend's wish to the great man, asks him, " What he will make 
 
 of Hippocrates ? " and Protagoras answers, " A better and 
 
 wiser man " — that is, he will teach him how to do the right 
 
 ^thing always in private_and public life. Socrates expresses 
 
 \doubt as to whethe r_Jthe science of right conduct, or virtue 
 
 yprivate and political— for that is whaTProtagoras professes to be 
 
 able to teach — can really be taught. The Athenians, as a body, 
 
 apparently do not think that it can be taught, for they do not 
 
 demand it of their politicians; nor do the wisest and best 
 
 citizens think that it can be taught, for they never attempt to 
 
 impart it to their sons. 
 
 The Myth (together with the Lecture of which it is a part) 
 is the answer which Protagoras now gives to the difficulties 
 raised by Socrates. The object of the Myth and Lecture is 
 to show, that virtue — or rather, the virtues, for Protagoras 
 enumerates five : wisdom, temperance, justice, holiness, courage 
 — can be taught. 
 
 When Protagoras has finished his Myth and Lecture, con- 
 versation is resumed between him. and Socrates, and results in 
 making it plain that the five virtues must be reduced to one — 
 
 212 
 
THE PBOTAGOBAS MYTH 213 
 
 viz., to knowledge, which is represented as the art of measuring 
 values — the values of the various objects which conduct sets 
 before itself. 
 
 Thus it has been brought about that Protagoras must admit 
 the conclusion that virtue is knowledge, unless he would con- 
 tradict his own thesis that it can be taught; while Socrates, 
 in showing that it is knowledge, confirms that thesis, which 
 he began by disputing. 
 
214 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Protagoras 320 c-323 A 
 
 320 C *Hi/ γαρ 7Γ0Τ€ χ^ρόνος, ore θβοί μβν ήσαν, θνητά Sk 
 D yevη ουκ ην, βττβιΒη δε καΐ τούτοις γ^ρόνος ηΧθβν 
 €ίμαρμ€νο<ζ '^^νεσβως^ τνττοΰσίν αυτά θβοί 'γης evhov €Κ 'γής 
 καΐ ττυρος μίξαντβς καΐ των οσα ττυρί καΐ yrj κβραννυται. 
 iTreihrj δ* ayeiv αυτά, προς φως βμεΧΧον, ττροσέταξαν 
 Τίρομηθβΐ καΐ ^ΈίΤΓΐμηθεΐ κόσμησαν Τ€ κα\ νβΐμαί 8υνάμ€ΐ>ς 
 €κάστοι,ς ώς ττρεττβι. ΐΐρομηθέα δε παραιτείται ^Έίττιμηθευς 
 αύτος νβΐμαί* ^είμαντος δ' €μου, βφη, ίττίσκβ'ψαν. καϊ οΰτω 
 Ε ΊΓβίσας ν€μ€ΐ, νέμων δε τοΐς μεν Ισγυν άνευ τάγρυς 
 ττροσήτΓΤβ, τα δ' ασθενέστερα τάγει εκόσμεί' τα Βε ώττλίξε, 
 τοις δ' άοττλον ΒίΒούς ψύσιν αΧλην τιν αύτοΐς εμηγανατο 
 Βύναμίν εΙς σωτηρίαν. α μεν ycup αυτών σμικρότητα ημτη- 
 σχε, τΓτηνον φυ^γην ή κατά^γειον οϊκησιν ενεμεν α Βε ηΰξε 
 321 με^εθει, τωΒε αύτω αύτα έσωζε* καϊ ταΧΚα οΰτως εττανισών 
 ένεμε, ταύτα Βε εμη'χανατο ευΚάβειαν εγων, μη τι ^ενος 
 άΐστωθείη. εττειΒη Βε αύτοΐς άΧΧηΧοφθοριών Βίαφυ'γας 
 εττηρκεσε, προς τας εκ Δ,ώς ώρας εύμάρειαν εμη'χανατο 
 άμφίεννύς αύτα πυκναΐς τε θριξϊ καϊ στερεοΐς Βερμασιν, 
 Ικανοΐς μεν άμυναι χειμώνα, Βυνατοΐς Βε και καύματα, και 
 εις εύνας ίοΰσιν όπως ύπαρχοι τα αύτα ταύτα στρωμνη 
 οικεία τε καϊ αυτοφυής εκάστω* καϊ ύπο ποΒών τα μεν 
 Β οπΧαΐς, τα Βε θριξι και Βερμασι στερεοΐς και άναίμοις. 
 τούντεΰθεν τροφάς άΧλοις άΧλας εξεπόριζε, τοΐς μεν εκ ^γής 
 βοτάνην, αΧΧοις Βε ΒενΒρων καρπούς, τοΐς Βε ρίζας* εστί 
 δ* οϊς εΒωκεν είναι τροφην ζώων αΧΧων βοράν. καϊ τοΐς 
 μεν oXiyoyoviav προσήψε, τοΐς δ* άναΧισκομενοις ύπο 
 τούτων πoXυyovίav, σωτηρίαν τω yεvει πορίζων, ατε Βη 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 215 
 
 Translation 
 
 Time^was when^there were Gods/but mo rtal c reatures / 
 after their kind Avere_ not^ Now^^when the appointed time 
 came unto these also tfiat they should be born, the gods 
 fashioned them under ^i^e JEarth, compound^^ earth/ 
 
 and of fire,] and of whatsoever is made by the mingling of fire 
 and earth. Now when they were ready to bring them to 
 light, they gave commandment unto Prometheus and Epi- 
 metheus to adorn them, and distribute unto each the powers 
 that were meet. But Epimetheus entreated of Prometheus 
 to let him distribute. " When I have distributed," quoth he, 
 " do thou see whether it is done well." 
 
 So he prevailed with him, and distributed : and unto some 
 he gave strength without swiftness, but the weaker he adorned 
 with swiftness ; unto others he gave weapons ; and for those 
 unto whom he gave not weapons he contrived other means 
 of safety ; to wit, unto those of them which he clothed with 
 smallness he appointed winged escape, or habitation under 
 ground ; and unto those which he increased with bigness, the 
 safety which cometh therefrom. After this fashion, then, did 
 he distribute, ever making one gift equal unto another. These 
 things he contrived, lest perchance any race should be cut off. 
 But when he had furnished them with means for escaping 
 destruction from one another, he contrived for them con- 
 venient defence against the seasons of the year, clothing them 
 with thick hairs and stout hides sufficient to keep off the cold 
 of winter and the burning heat ; the which might also be for 
 couches proper and native unto each one of them, when they 
 went to their lairs. Moreover, he shod some of them with 
 hoofs, and others with hairs and thick skin without blood. 
 After that he appointed unto them different kinds of food: 
 unto some the herbs of the earth, unto others the fruits of 
 the trees, unto others roots ; and some there were unto which 
 he appointed for food the flesh of other beasts. And he 
 ordained that they should bring forth young, some few, and 
 others, which were devoured of these, many, that their race 
 might be preserved. 
 
216 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ovp ου ττάνν τι σοφ6<ζ ων ο ^ΈίΤΤίμηθβνς eXaOev αυτόν 
 
 C καταναΧώσας τά? Βυνάμ€ί<ζ eh τα aXoya. Χοιττον Βη 
 άκοσμητον €τι αύτω ην το άνθρώττων yevo<;, καΐ ηττόρβι 6 
 τι γ^ρησαίτο. άττοροΰντί δε αύτω βργβται ΤΙρομηθβύς 
 €7Γΐσκ€ψομ€νος την νομην, καϊ ορα τα μβν αΧλα ζώα 
 εμμβΧώς ττάντων εγοντα, τον he άνθρωττον ηυμνόν Te καϊ 
 άνυτΓοΒητον καϊ άστρωτον καϊ άοττΧον. ή8η Be καϊ η 
 eίμapμevη ημέρα τταρήν, ev fj eBei καϊ άνθρωττον έξιάναι €Κ 
 γ?}9 eh φως. άττορία ουν eχ^6μevoς 6 Ή.ρομηθ€ύ<;, ήντινα 
 σωτηρίαν τω άνθρώττω €ΰροί, KXeiTTei Ηφαίστου καϊ 
 
 Ό * Αθήνας την evTe^vov σοφίαν συν ττυρί — άμη'χανον yap ην 
 άveυ ττυρος αύτην κτητην τω η 'χ^ρησίμην yev€σθac — , καϊ 
 οΰτω Βη BωpeLτaι άνθρώττω. την μ€ν ουν TTepl τον βίον 
 σοφίαν άνθρωττος ταύτη έ'σχβ, την Be ττοΧίτικην ούκ εΖχεζ^• 
 ην yap τταρα τω Ad' τω Be Tipoμηθeΐ eh μίν την άκρό- 
 TToXiv την του Αίος οϊκησυν ούκέτί eve'χώpeL elσeXθeΐv^ 
 ττρος Be καϊ αΐ Αώς φυΧακαΙ φoβepal ήσαν eh Be το της 
 
 Ε Αθηνάς καϊ 'Ή,φαίστου οϊκημα το κοίνόν, ev ω έφίΧο- 
 Τ€χν€ίτην, Χαθών elσep'χeτaι, καϊ κΧέψας την Te €μττυρον 
 τάχνην την του Ηφαίστου καϊ την άΧΧην την της 'Αθηνάς 
 ΒίΒωσιν άνθρώττω καϊ έκ τούτου eύττopίa μβν άνθρώττω του 
 322 βίου yίyveτaι, ΙΙρομηθέα Be Βί 'Έ^ττίμηθέα ύστepov, ηττ€ρ 
 XeyeTao, κΧοττής Βίκη μeτηXθev. 
 
 ΈτΓβίδ^ Be ο άνθρωττος θeίaς μeτeσ'χe μοίρας, ττρώτον 
 μ€ν Βία την του θeoϋ συyyeveLav ζώων μόνον θeoυς evόμισey 
 καϊ eττe'χeίpeL βωμούς Te ίBpύeσθaί καϊ άyάXμaτa θeώv' 
 eTrecTa φωνην καϊ ονόματα ταγυ Βιηρθρώσατο τη τέ'χνη, 
 καϊ olκησeiς καϊ €σθήτας καϊ ύττoBeσeίς καϊ στρωμνας καϊ 
 τας €Κ yής τροφας eupeTO. οΰτω Βη ττapeσκeυaσμevoL• κατ 
 
 Β άρ'χας άνθρωττου ωκουν σττοράΒην, ττόXeLς Be ούκ ήσαν. 
 άττώΧΧυντο ουν ύττο των θηρίων Βίά το ττανταγτΙ αυτών 
 άσθeveστepoL elvai, καϊ η BημLoυpy^,κη τέγνη aύτoh ττρος 
 μ€ν τροφην Ικανη βοηθός ην, ττρος Be τον των θηρίων 
 ττoXeμov €vBeής• ττοΧιτικην yap τέγνην οΰττω el^pv, ης 
 μέρος TToXetiLKTi. ίζητουν Βη άθpoίζeσθaί καϊ σώζeσθat 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 217 
 
 Now, inasmuch as Epimetheus was not very wise, he un- 
 wittingly spent all the qualities he had upon the brutes ; and 
 lo I mankind was still left unto him unadorned, and he knew 
 not what he should do concerning them. 
 
 While he yet doubteth, Prometheus cometh unto him to 
 look into his distribution ; and perceiveth that all other 
 creatures are duly furnished in all things, but that man is 
 naked and without shoes or bed or weapons : and now was 
 come the appointed day on the which man also should go 
 forth from the earth into the light. ^ 
 
 Wherefore PrometheusflSeing Brought tohis^lial.fiSi 
 devise any means of safety for man/'stea leth the cun n in j 
 workman's wisdom of Hephaestus and ABHena, togetheir with 
 fire — for witho ut (fir e none can get this wisdom or Ise it ; 
 and this he giveth as a gift unto man. J 
 
 Thus did man get the mechanic wisdom needful for his 
 bare life ; but the wisdom which is needful for the life poli- 
 tical he had not, for it was with Zeus ; and unto Prometheus 
 it was no longer permitted to enter into the citadel, the 
 dwelling-place of Zeus ; moreover, the guards of Zeus were 
 terrible ; but into the common dwelling of Athena and 
 Hephaestus, wherein they plied their craft, he secretly entered, 
 and stole the fiery art of Hephaestus, and also Athena's art, 
 and gave them unto man. Whence came convenient living 
 unto man ; but as for Prometheus, he was afterwards arraigned 
 for theft because of Epimetheus, as the story telleth. 
 
 Now man, having been made a partaker of the divine lot, 
 by reason of his kinship with the Godhead, alone among living 
 creatures believed in Gods, and began to take it in hand to 
 set up altars unto them and make graven images of them. Then 
 soon with cunning device did he frame articulate speech and 
 names, and invented houses to dwell in, and raiment and shoes to 
 put on, and beds for rest, and food from the fruits of the earth. 
 
 Thus furnished, men at first dwelt scattered abroad, and 
 there were no cities. Wherefore men were continually 
 devoured by wild beasts, for they were altogether weaker than 
 the beasts, and their craftsman's art could help them to get 
 food enough, but was not sufficient for their war with the 
 wild beasts ; for they had not yet the art political, whereof 
 the art of warfare is a part. 
 
218 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 /€τΙζοντ€ς 7ro\et9. 6t ovv άθροισθεΐεν, ηΒίκουν ά\\ή\ου<ζ, 
 are ουκ εγοντε^ την ττοΧιτίκην τεγνην, ωστ€ irakiv σκε^αν- 
 
 C νύμβνοί Βίβφθβίροντο. Ζ6ύ<ζ ουν δεισα? ττερί τω ^evei ημών, 
 μη άττόΧοιτο τταν, ^Έιρμήν ττβμττβί ayovra eh άνθρώπτου^ 
 αΙΒώ τ€ καΐ Βίκην, ϊν elev ττοΚβων κόσμοι τε καΧ ΒεσμοΙ 
 φιλίας avvaywyoL' έρωτα ουν Έρμης Αία, τίνα ουν τρόττον 
 Βοίη Βίκην καΐ αΙΒω άνθρώττοις. ττότβρον ως αΐ τέγναι 
 νενίμηνται, οΰτω καϊ ταύτας νβίμω; νενέμηνται Be ώδε• €Ϊς 
 e -χ^ων ίατρικην ττοΧΧοΐς Ικανός ΙΒιώταις, καϊ οΐ aWol• 
 Bημtovpyoί. καϊ Βίκην Βη καϊ αΙΒώ οΰτω θώ iv τοις 
 
 D άνθρώττοος, ή eVl ττάντας ν€ίμω ; ΈττΙ ττάντας, εφτ; ο Zeύς, 
 καϊ 'πάvτeς μετ€'χ6ντων ' ου yap αν yevoiVTO ^Γo\eLς, el 
 oXiyoL αυτών μ€Τ€'χοί€ν ώσττερ αΧΚων τ€γνών. καϊ νόμον 
 ye θ€ς τταρ Ιμου τον μη Bυvάμevov αΙΒοΰς καϊ Βίκης 
 μeτeχeίv KTeiveiv ως νόσον πτο\,€ως. Οΰτω Βη, ω %ώκρατ€ς, 
 καϊ Βία ταΰτα οΧ τε αΧΧοι, καϊ οΐ ^Αθηναΐοί, όταν μίν 
 irepX άpeτης τeκτovcκης η Xoyoς η άΧΧης τίνος Bημιoυpyίκης, 
 6Xίyoις οϊονταί μeτeΐvaL συμβουΧης, καϊ eav τίς €Κτος ων 
 
 Ε των 6Xίyωv συμβουΧ€ύΎ], ουκ άνέ'χ^ονται, ως συ φ^ς' eiKO- 
 τως, ως iycio φημί' όταν δε €ίς συμβουΧην ττοΧιτικής 
 323 άpeτής ϊωσιν, ην Bel Βία Βίκαίοσύνης ττάσαν Ιύναί καϊ 
 σωφροσύνης, €ΐκοτως άτταντος άνΒρος άνέ'χ^ονταί, ως τταντί 
 ττροσήκον ταύτης ye /-ί,ετεχείΐ/ της άpeτής, η μη elvai 
 7Γ6Xeις. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 219 
 
 Wherefore they sought to assemble themselves together, 
 and save themselves by building cities. 
 
 Now when they were assembled together, they wronged 
 one another, because they had not the art political ; so they 
 were again scattered abroad, and were like to be destroyed. 
 
 But Zeus, fearing lest our race should perish utterly, com- 
 mandeth Hermes to go unto men bearing modesty and justice, 
 for the ordering of cities, and to be bonds joining men to- 
 gether in friendship. Hermes inquireth of Zeus how he shall 
 give justice and modesty unto men. "Are these," quoth he, 
 " to be distributed as the arts are distributed, the which are 
 distributed after this wise — one man hath the art of physic, or 
 some other art, and is sufficient unto many who have it not ? 
 Shall I distribute justice and modesty among men thus, or 
 give them unto all ? " " Unto all," said Zeus, " and let all be 
 partakers of them. For if few were partakers as of the arts, 
 cities would not arise. Also make it a law from me, that he 
 who cannot partake of modesty and justice shall be put to 
 death, for he bringeth plague into the city. 
 
 For this reason, Socrates, the Athenians and others, when 
 they consult about things which need the skill of the carpenter 
 or other handicraftsman, think that few advisers are enough, and 
 if any one who is not of those thrust himself forward to advise, 
 they will have none of him. Thus do they, thou sayest. And 
 I say 'tis but reasonable they should do this. But when they 
 enter into counsel concerning those things that pertain unto 
 virtue political, which must needs walk alway in the path of 
 righteousness and temperance, then with reason do they bear 
 with any man as a counsellor, considering that all men must 
 partake of this virtue, else there could be no city. 
 
220 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Observations on the Protagoras Myth 
 
 I 
 
 Before calling attention to some important points in this 
 Myth, I must allude to a view maintained by some critics — 
 that it is not a Platonic Myth at all, but only a Sophistic 
 Apologue, or Illustrative Story, like Prodicus's Choice of 
 Hercules. This view is stated, and objected to, by Grote in 
 the following passage : ^ — 
 
 The speech is censured by some critics as prolix. But to me it 
 seems full of matter and argument, exceedingly free from super- 
 fluous rhetoric. The fable with which it opens presents, of course, 
 the poetical ornament which belongs to that manner of handling. 
 It is, however, fully equal, in point of perspicuity as well as 
 charm, — in my judgment, it is even superior, — to any fable in 
 Plato. 
 
 When the harangue, lecture, or sermon of Protagoras is con- 
 cluded, Sokrates both expresses his profound admiration of it, and 
 admits the conclusion — that virtue is teachable — to be made out, 
 as well as it can be made out by any continuous exposition. 
 
 Very different, indeed, is the sentiment of the principal Platonic 
 commentators. Schleiermacher will not allow the mythus of 
 Protagoras to be counted among the Platonic myths. He says 
 that it is composed in the style of Protagoras, and perhaps copied 
 from some real composition of that Sophist. He finds in it 
 nothing but a " grobmaterialistiche Denkungsart, die iiber die 
 sinnliche Erfahrung nicht hinaus philosophirt " {Einleitung zum 
 Protagoras, vol. i. pp. 233, 234). 
 
 To the like purpose Ast {Plat. Leh. p. 71), who tells us that 
 what is expressed in the mythus is, " The vulgar and mean senti- 
 ment and manner of thought of the Sophist ; for it deduces every- 
 thing, both arts and the social union itself, from human wants and 
 necessity." Apparently these critics, when they treat this as a 
 proof of meanness and vulgarity, have forgotten that the Platonic 
 Sokrates himself does exactly the same thing in the Republic — 
 deriving the entire social union from human necessities (Eepubl. 
 ii. 369 c). 
 
 K. F. Hermann is hardly less severe upon the Protagorean 
 discourse (Gesch. und Syst. der Plat. Phil. p. 460). 
 
 For my part, I take a view altogether opposed to these learned 
 persons. I think the discourse one of the most striking and 
 
 1 Plat. ii. pp. 46, 47. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 221 
 
 instructive portions of the Platonic writings ; and if I could 
 believe that it was the composition of Protagoras himself, my 
 estimation of him would be considerably raised. 
 
 Steinhart pronounces a much more rational and equitable 
 judgment than Ast and Schleiermacher upon the discourse of 
 Protagoras (Einleitung zum Protagoras^ pp. 422, 423).^ 
 
 I entirely agree with Grote ; and hope that I shall be 
 able in the following observations to show reason for the 
 opinion that this is not a mere illustrative story, designed to 
 put popularly in a picture what might be put abstrusely, but a 
 genuine Myth containing suggestions of the kind which must be 
 put Sia μυθόλο'γίας or not at all. (ffhe mark of a true Myth, it I 
 must be remembered, is that it sets fortj^ the a prior i elem ents I 
 in man's exper ience. An illustrative Story or Allegory, as 
 such, merely makes easier and more pleasant the task of 
 receiving and recalling a posteriori data. This is the broad 
 distinction between Myth and Allegory — a distinction which 
 we must not lose sight of, although we observe that Allegory 
 in the hands of a man of genius, like Plato, or Dante, or 
 Bunyan, always tends to become Myth ; and that there are 
 few Myths, as distinguished from Allegories, which are not 
 built up of parts, some of which are Allegories. 
 
 While contending strongly for the view that the discourse 
 delivered by Protagoras is a true Myth, not an Allegory, I do 
 not forget that it is delivered by Protagoras. But even 
 this, I submit, is quite consistent with its being a Myth, and 
 that, even if Stallbaum (Note on Protag. 320 c) is right in 
 thinking that Plato is parodying Protagoras's style and borrow- 
 ing from his book irepl της iv αρ'χτ} καταστάσεως. The 
 Timaeus, at any rate, is a Myth, although it is not spoken by 
 Socrates and imitates a style very different from that of the 
 Myths spoken by Socrates. If we are to take the concrete view 
 necessary to the proper understanding of Plato's Myths as they 
 come up individually for critical judgment, we must allow for the 
 dramatic circumstances of each case. The Myth told in the 
 Symposium by Aristophanes, being told by Aristophanes, has 
 
 ^ Professor Campbell [Politicus, Introd. p. xxxii.) is apparently with the 
 critics from whom Grote differs : — " The myth in the Protagoras ... is meant to 
 convey an idea which Socrates combats, and which Plato evidently does not fully 
 accept. So also the elaborate myth of Aristophanes in the Symposium contains 
 a phase of thought about tli• Origin of Love which is afterwards glanced at as 
 an hypothesis of little value [Sympos. 205 e)." 
 
222 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 a comic vein ; similarly, the Myth put into the mouth of Pro- 
 tagoras is somewhat pompous and confused. None the less, 
 these, I would contend, and the other non-Socratic Myths are 
 true Platonic Myths. It is always Plato the Dramatist who, 
 through the mouth of Aristophanes, or Protagoras, or the 
 Eleatic Stranger, sets forth for the Imagination the Universal 
 of which the Scientific Understanding can give no account. 
 
 II 
 
 The second observation I have to make on the Protagoras 
 Myth is that it sets forth the distinction between the 
 Mechanical and the Teleological explanations of the world 
 and its parts — the distinction with which Kant is occupied 
 in his Kritik der Urtheilskraft. According to Kant, the 
 antinomy between these two explanations exists for the Deter- 
 minant Judgment (the Judgment which, given the Universal, 
 brings the Particular under it) but not for the Eeflective 
 Judgment (the Judgment which, given the Particular, finds a 
 Universal by which to explain it). The Universal of Teleology 
 — a σκοιτός, or Purpose, to serve which all things in the 
 world are designed by a Personal God — is a Principle, or 
 Universal, which may be posited by the Eeflective Judgment, 
 without contradiction, by the side of the mechanical principle 
 of explanation — indeed, must be posited, for without the guid- 
 ance it affords we could not understand the world at all ; but, 
 for all that, we are not warranted in assuming that it is a prin- 
 ciple objectively existing and operative in the world. Natural 
 objects which we can understand only as results of purpose 
 may very well be due to mere mechanism. " Purposiveness 
 is a concept which has its origin solely in the Eeflective 
 Judgment " ; ^ i.e. it is a Universal which we think of, which 
 we find useful ; but it does not, therefore, exist independently 
 of our thought, as a real cause. 
 
 What 2 in the end does the most complete teleology prove? 
 Does it prove that there is such an Intelligent Being ? No. It 
 only proves that according to the constitution of our cognitive 
 
 ^ Bernard's Transl. of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft (Critique of Judgment), 
 p. 18. 
 
 2 Bernard's Transl. of the Critique of Judgment, pp. 311, 312, and 260, 261. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 223 
 
 faculties ... we can form absolutely no concept of the possibility 
 of such a world as this save by thinking a designedly working 
 Supreme Cause thereof. ... If we expressed ourselves dogmati- 
 cally, we should say, "There is a God." But all we are justified 
 in saying is, " Things are so internally constituted as if there were 
 a God"; i.e. we cannot otherwise think that purposiveness 
 which must lie at the bottom of our cognition of the internal 
 possibility of many natural things, than by representing it, and 
 the world in general, as a product of an Intelligent Cause — a God. 
 Now, if this proposition, based on an inevitably necessary maxim 
 of our Judgment, is completely satisfactory, from every human 
 point of view, for both the speculative and practical use of our 
 Reason, I should like to know what we lose by not being able to 
 prove it as also valid for higher beings, from objective grounds 
 (which are unfortunately beyond our faculties). It is, indeed, 
 quite certain that we cannot adequately cognise, much less 
 explain, organised beings and their internal possibility, according 
 to mere mechanical principles of nature ; and, we can say boldly, 
 it is alike certain that it is absurd for men to make any such 
 attempt, or to hope that another Newton will arise in the future, 
 who shall make comprehensible by us the production of a blade of 
 grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered. We 
 must absolutely deny this insight to men.^ But then, how do we 
 know that in nature, if we could penetrate to the principle by 
 which it specifies the universal laws known to us, there cannot lie 
 hidden (in its mere mechanism) a suflScient ground of the pos- 
 sibility of organised beings, without supposing any design in their 
 production 1 Would it not be judged by us presumptuous to say 
 this? 
 
 Probabilities here are of no account, when we have to do with 
 judgments of the Pure Reason ; we cannot, therefore, judge 
 objectively, either affirmatively or negatively, concerning the pro- 
 position : Does a Being, acting according to design, lie at the 
 basis of what we rightly call natural purposes, as the cause of the 
 world, and consequently as its author 1 . . . The teleological act 
 of judgment is rightly brought to bear, at least problematically, 
 upon the investigation of nature, but only in order to bring it 
 under principles of observation and inquiry according to the 
 analogy with the causality of purpose, without any pretence to 
 explain it thereby. It belongs, therefore, to the Reflective and not 
 to the Determinant Judgment. The concept of combinations and 
 forms of nature in accordance with purposes is then at least one 
 principle more for bringing its phenomena under rules where the 
 laws of simply mechanical causality do not suffice. For we bring 
 
 in a teleological ground, when we attribute causality in respect of 
 
 • 
 ^ Is Kant right here ? This is the great Question of Pliilosophy. 
 
224 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 an Object to the concept of an Object, as if it were to be found in 
 nature (not in ourselves),^ or rather when we represent to our- 
 selves the possibility of the Object after the analogy of that 
 causality which we experience in ourselves, and consequently 
 think nature technically as through a special faculty. If, on the 
 other hand, we did not ascribe to it such a method of action, its 
 causality would have to be represented as blind mechanism. If, 
 on the contrary, we supply to nature causes acting designedly^ and 
 consequently place at its basis teleology, not merely as a regulative 
 principle for the mere judging of phenomena, to which nature can 
 be thought as subject in its particular laws, but as a constitutive 
 principle of the derivation of its products from their causes, then 
 would the concept of a natural purpose no longer belong to the 
 Reflective but to the Determinant Judgment. Then, in fact, it 
 would not belong specially to the Judgment (like the concept of 
 beauty regarded as formal subjective purposiveness), but as a 
 rational concept it would introduce into a natural science a new 
 causality, which we only borrow from ourselves and ascribe to 
 other beings, without meaning to assume them to be of the same 
 kind with ourselves. 
 
 Now let us return to the Protagoras Myth, which I have 
 said sets forth the distinction between the teleological and the 
 mechanical methods of explaining the world and its parts. 
 
 In the animals as equipped by Epimetheus, Afterthought, 
 "who was not very wise," the world and its parts are pre- 
 sented as products of mere mechanism which are regarded by 
 foolish Afterthought as due to his own design. The qualities 
 with which Epimetheus equips the animals are only those by 
 which they barely survive in their struggle for existence. An 
 animal that is small and weak burrows in the earth, and 
 survives. But to suppose that its power of burrowing was 
 designed with a view to its survival is to forget that it was 
 only Afterthought who conferred the power, not Forethought. 
 To suppose design here is as unnecessary surely as it would 
 be to suppose that gold ore was hidden in the quartz in order 
 that men might have difficulty in finding it. As a matter of 
 fact, small weak animals that burrow are not generally found 
 by their enemies ; as a matter of fact, animals with thick fur 
 do not generally perish in a cold climate ; as a matter of fact, 
 swift animals are not generally caught ; as a matter of fact, 
 
 ^ The proper understanding of the Doctrine of ίδέαί seems to me to depend 
 on the proper appreciation of the point here put by Kant. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 225 
 
 prolific animals generally do not die off fast enough to become 
 extinct. And yet Afterthought takes credit to himself for all 
 this! 
 
 In such cases there is really no design — no Forethought, 
 — merely the inevitable consequence of blind natural law ; 
 and it is only foolish Afterthought who pretends that there 
 is design — Afterthought who always begins to reflect after 
 the fait accompli, Afterthought the Father, as Pindar 
 says, of Pretence — ταν ^Έττίμαθβος . . . οΛίηνόον Ovyaripa 
 ΤΙρόφασίν} But the pretence of Epimetheus is found out. 
 He has nothing left wherewith to equip Man. He can seem 
 to " design " only where mechanism really does the work — 
 really produces the results which he pretends to produce by 
 his " design." The various modes of structure and habit 
 by which the lower animals correspond with their various 
 environments (and the summary list of these modes given 
 in the Myth shows that Plato has the eye of the true 
 naturalist) — the various modes of animal correspondence — are 
 indeed best accounted for mechanically, without any Epime- 
 thean pretence of teleology. But when we pass from the 
 άνα^καΐον of mere animal survival to the κα\6ν of human 
 civilisation, we pass, Plato in this Myth seems to tell us, 
 into another order of things. The mere survival of animals 
 is not such a great thing that we must think of it as caused 
 by Prometheus — as designed in the true sense ; but the 
 civilised life of Man is too beautiful and good a thing not to 
 be designed in the true sense — not to be an end consciously 
 aimed at by the Creator, who uses as his means the Art 
 which Prometheus gave to a few, and the Virtue which 
 Hermes placed within the reach of all. In short, Plato 
 seems to say in this Myth that a teleological explanation 
 of Man's Place in the Cosmos is indispensable. But let us 
 note that the teleological explanation which he offers is 
 conveyed in Myth. Plato's attitude here towards teleology 
 is not different from Kant's, if allowance be made for the 
 difference between the mythical and the critical ways of 
 expression. " Though not for the Determinant, yet for the 
 Keflective Judgment," says Kant,^ " we have sufficient ground 
 
 1 Findar, Pyth. v. 34. 
 2 Bernard's Transl. of the Grit, of Judgment p. 35. 
 
226 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 for judging man to be, not merely, like all organised beings, 
 a natural purpose} but also the ultimate purpose of nature 
 here on earth." It need hardly be said that the assumption 
 or working hypothesis which Kant here makes on behalf of 
 Man does not stand alone. If oaks could speak, they would 
 say that the Oak is "the ultimate purpose of nature here on 
 earth." 
 
 Ill 
 
 My next observation is on the account given of the origin 
 of Virtue — άρβτη — in the Protagoras Myth. 
 
 The gift of Epimetheus is φύσί<; — bodily structure and 
 function, with the instincts and habits thereon dependent, 
 whereby the lower animals correspond accurately, but blindly, 
 with a narrow immediate environment ; the gift of Pro- 
 metheus to Man, whose mere φύσις is not adequate to the 
 wider environment into which his destiny advances him, is 
 Al-t, τέχνη, which, though imparted to few, benefits the whole 
 race by completing φύσις, to borrow the phrase in which 
 Aristotle^ expresses the close relation existing between 
 Nature and Art, φύσις and τέχνη, Plato, too, wishes us to 
 look at the relation as a close one ; for in the Myth Pro- 
 metheus takes up his brother's unfinished work. But άρβτη 
 — morality (as distinguished, on the one hand, from φύσις — 
 natural constitution — the gift of Epimetheus to animals, and, 
 on the other hand, from τέχνη — aquired skill in some depart- 
 ment — the gift of Prometheus to a few men) — άρβτη, as dis- 
 tinguished from φύσις and τέχνη, is distributed by Hermes to 
 all men. All men have implanted in them what may be 
 called " an original moral sense," which education appeals to 
 and awakens. All men are capable of morality as they are 
 capable of speech. Virtue is " learnt " as one's mother tongue 
 is learnt, without any special instruction like that through 
 which some particular art or craft is acquired by a person 
 specially capable of acquiring it. Here the resemblance and 
 difference between Virtue and Art — a subject approached by 
 
 ^ "An organised product of nature (a natural purpose) is one in which, every 
 part is reciprocally purpose (end) and means." Bernard's Transl. of Crit. of 
 Judgment, p. 280 ; cf. Watson's Selections from Kant, p. 345. 
 
 '^ Phys. ii. 8, 199 a 15 : δλω? 5k η τέχνη τά μέν ivLTeXei ά η φύσι$ άδυνατ€Ϊ 
 airepyaaaadaL, τά δέ μιμείται. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH /Q^ 
 
 Plato from many sides — is viewed from yet another side, in 
 Myth, and, therefore, we may take it. /wi th deep insigh t- int^ i 
 its metap h^siral Ίτη] ;>οτΐΓ Art, though it is^the gilt*Oi Pro- 
 metheus, and~-distinguishes Man, as working for consciously 
 realised future ends, from the brutes, which, at most, live in 
 a dream of the present, is still only " a completion of nature," 
 and Man does not yet live the true life of Man under the 
 regime of Prometheus. The gift of Prometheus, indeed, came 
 from Heaven, but it was stolen. The Godlike intelligence of 
 Man employs itself in the pursuit of objects which, though 
 really means under the providence of the Creator to the ultimate 
 realisation of the true human life, are not yet regarded by 
 Man himself as more than means to the convenient life of the 
 dominant animal on earth. Man, having received the stolen 
 gift, conquers the lower animals ; yet still homo homini lupus. 
 But the gift which makes him see, with the eye of justice 
 and respect, his fellow-man as an End along with himself in 
 a Kingdom of Ends — this gift was not stolen, but is of the 
 Grace of God. It is given to all men, or at least is a 
 it/i?^ βρμαων which all may hope in the course of life to find ; and 
 it is given in greater measure to some men than to others. 
 Great teachers of the moral ideal arise, like great poets, 
 specially inspired ; and their power, whether manifested 
 in the silent example of their lives, or in the prophetic 
 utterance of Myth, is felt in its effects by all ; but the secret 
 of it is incommunicable.^ 
 
 The gift of άρβτη in greater measure is not, indeed, alluded 
 to in the Protagoras Myth, but it is, after all, merely an 
 eminent instance of the gift as described in that Myth. The 
 gift of άρβτή, whether in less or greater measure, is of the 
 Grace of God. Such a doctrine is properly conveyed in Myth ; 
 and the discourse of Protagoras in which it is conveyed is, I 
 submit, a true Myth, because it sets forth the a priori, not, as 
 Schleiermacher and some other critics maintain, a mere 
 Sophistic Apologue or Allegory illustrating and popularising 
 a posteriori data. 
 
 "As to the myth brought forward by Protagoras," says 
 Schleiermacher,^ " there is no need to number it as some have 
 
 *See Meno, 99, 100. 
 2 Introduction to the Protagoras, p. 96, Dobson's Transl. 
 
«ce^t 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 , good-naturedly raising it to an exalted rank, among those 
 of Plato's own ; on the contrary, if not the property of Prota- 
 goras himself, as seems likely, though there is no evidence to 
 confirm the supposition, yet the manner in which Plato applies 
 it makes it much more probable that it is, at all events, com- 
 posed in his spirit. For precisely as is natural to one of a 
 coarsely materialistic mode of thinking, whose philosophy does 
 not extend beyond immediate sensuous experience, the reason- 
 ing principle in men is only viewed as a recompense for their 
 deficient corporeal conformation, and the idea of right with 
 the feeling of shame, as requisite for a sensuous existence, 
 and as something not introduced into the minds of men until 
 a later period." 
 
 " Not introduced into the minds of men until a later 
 period I" This objection appears to me to be founded on a 
 misunderstanding of what a Myth is and does. It is of the 
 very essence of a Myth to represent as having a history in 
 time what in itself is out of time. The Soul, which is the 
 Subject of all experience in time, is mythologically set forth 
 as an Object or Thing whose creation, incarnation and earthly 
 life, disembodied state and penance, re-incarnation and final 
 purification or damnation, can be traced as events in time. 
 How absurd to draw inferences from the chronology of such a 
 history! Fit is not the historical question. When the mind 
 received the idea of Virtue, whether later or sooner, that Plato 
 is really concerned with ; but the philosophical question, 
 What is the true nature qfVirtue — of the Virtuous Soul — of 
 the Soul itseLf.-et-4ts bestp " ^fce^ouj^j^ato," as Hege l ^ | 
 says, " is nojfl a Thing l(he permanence^ Qrnoiy^^^^^^e^ofJ 
 
 ' ^ ' " ^^ e}! in^y th this ' 
 
 ImSperm^gj^ntM έ 
 Tcis indeed no ' 
 
 which 
 
 uss, 
 
 cessarily 
 
 succession oiy^ 
 ^me^B 
 
 IS m 
 er that a 
 
 as a TJiim 
 timSr 
 
 Myth is a Myth.^ 
 
 A Myth may be told in painting, or embroidery, or sculp- ,^^ 
 ture, as well as in words ; and I am going to conclude these 
 remarks on the Protagoras Myth by asking the reader to look 
 
THE PBOTAGOBAS MYTH 229 
 
 at a sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum on which the 
 mystery of Man's birth and li fe and death is rendered for the 
 eye in a relief rep resenting,^^Svelv enough , the history of the 
 (Butterfly -Sou l and bts Clay Bodyj the handiwork of Prometheus.•^ 
 There sits Prometheus with a basket of clay beside him ; 
 on his knees a little human figure standing, which he supports 
 with his left hand ; while his right hand, holding the model- 
 ling stick, is drawn back, its work finished. On the head 
 of the little human figure Athena lightly sets a butterfly. 
 Behind and above, Clotho spins the thread of life, and 
 Lachesis draws the horoscope on a globe of the Heavens. It 
 is morning, for Helios with his chariot and horses is rising 
 on the left hand. Beneath him is seated Gaia with her horn 
 of plenty; near him lies Oceanus with his rudder in his hand; 
 while the "Wind-God blows through his shell ; and^ihalf hide 
 
 rougJ 
 among these elemental powers/Eros kiss es Psyche. ^ 
 
 Now let us turn from the Morning and Day of the sculp- 
 tured Myth, and look at its Evening and Night. On the right 
 of the two central figures, Prometheus and Athena, close by 
 Athena with Chgr butterfly, stands Nigh t, a tall draped woma n, 
 aboyfiL^whom i s^^SuteSe'ln" her^r, witd her veir^ akin^(^ 
 fjiresce niO behinc i her in th e wind^s she ridesl At the feet of 
 Nightlies a Youth, dead, with his butterfly-soul fluttering 
 near. Death, with down-turned torch, is bending over the 
 corpse, and Fate sits at its head frmrolling^ a scroll J on her 
 knee; while the Soul of the Youth, — now a little -winged 
 human form, — led by Hermes, is already on its westward way 
 to Hades. 
 
 This is the front of the sarcophagus ; and the two ends 
 include the mystery of the front in a larger mystery. On the 
 one end is Hephaestus at his forge, and the fire is burning 
 which Prometheus stole. On the other end the sin is 
 punished — Prometheus lies bound upon Caucasus, and the 
 vulture sits over him; but Heracles, with his bow bent, is 
 coming to deliver him. 
 
 ^ The versioji of the Myth presupposed by the Capitoline artist is plainly 
 Neo-Platonic. Πη the Myth as Plato has it in the Protagoras, Pr ometheu s does 
 not m ake Man . On the Capitoline sa rcophagus (No.* 446 [13], described by 
 Ή.Q\h\g^;^J^^utιrer durch die qfentl. Sammlungen Tclass. Alterth. in Rom., vol. i. 
 p. 341 ; and cf. Mitche l l, History of Anc. Scidpturc, p. 6&3X he does ; just as, in 
 Plotinus, Enn. iv. ^ΓΤ3 (quoted p. 238 ir^ra), he — not, as in Hesiod, 0. et D. 
 49 fF., Hephaeatus— fnakes Pandor^ 
 
 i^ 
 
230 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 {Excursus on Allegory) 
 
 The story of Prometheus, wliether as told in the Prota- 
 goraSy or as represented on the Capitoline sarcophagus, is, I 
 am prepared to maintain, a genuine Myth — sets forth a 
 ^mystery which the scientifi c understanding cannot fath'oS 
 At the same time, it is a Myth which evidently lends itself 
 more easily than those which we have hitherto examined to 
 allegorical interpretation, and, indeed, in Keo-Plato ni c han ds 
 beca me the subject o f very beautiful allegorical interpretation. 
 It would seem, then, that at the Frotagords Myth we have 
 reached the stage in our review of the Platonic Myths at 
 which some connected remarks may be offered on a point 
 which has been already alluded to — the Difference between 
 Myth and Allegory ; and along with Allegory we may con- 
 sider Parable. 
 
 I remarked a little while ago that a composition which, 
 as a whole, is a Myth, and not an Allegory, is often found to 
 be built up of parts, some of which are Allegories. The 
 Pliaedrus Mvth and the Divina Commedia are compositions of 
 this build. /This partly explains the circumstance that even 
 
 I the nob lest Myths have so often fallen ^^ easy prey to alle- 
 go rical inter pretation./ Because the parts are plainly Alle- 
 gories, it IS supposed that the whole is an Allegory. And 
 there are no limits to allegorical interpretation, ^^y Myth 
 — nay, any true account of historical events or of natural 
 
 I phenomena — can be interpreted a s an Alleg ory, setting forth 
 any do^na, religious, philosophical, or scientific.^ 
 
 The importance of the part played by the allegorical 
 interpretation of Homer in the Greek philosophical schools, of 
 the Old Testament History among the Alexandrine Jews and 
 Christian Fathers, and of the Platonic Myths among the JSTeo- 
 Platonists,^ cannot easily be over-estimated by the historian of 
 
 ^ * ' The Myths were accepted by common consent as the text for the deepest 
 speculations of the later Platonic schools, and so have contributed, through 
 them, more largely than any other part of Plato's writings to the sum of 
 common thoughts." — Westcott's assays in the History of Religious Thought in 
 the West ("The Myths of Plato "), p. 46. 
 
( 
 
 THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 231 
 
 philosophical and religious thought. As early as the time of 
 Xenophanes^ it was felt that the tendency of the popular 
 mythology was immoml. " Homer and Hesiod/' he says, " have 
 as cribed to the Gods fall things that are a shame and a disgrace 
 among men — thefts 8iii4 adulteries, and deception of one another." • 
 With t his verdict(Plato is in entire agreement / (i? gy>. 378 d) ; 
 but not with the method of allegorical interpre&Si^n (see 
 Phaedrus, 229), which attempted to save both Homer and 
 morality.^ Plato, objecting to the allegorical interpretation 
 of Myth on literary and philosophical grounds, as well as on 
 the practical ground alleged in Rejp. 378 D — that ^hildrenli 
 cannot distinguish between a llegori cal and l iteral me aning, — *i 
 banishes Homer from the educational curriculum, and in lieu 
 of his stories, since children must begin with stories, sub- 
 stitutes newly invented stories — moral^ tales, we may suppose^ 
 for he gives no specimens — in whicl/Gods and human beingsY 
 behave in a manner which can, ami ought to, be imitated,! 
 just as the good people behave in some modern story-books for 
 the young. 
 
 But in his objection tofthe allegorisation of Homer jpiato 
 stands almost alone. The line generally t aken by th e Greeks 
 after, as well as before, Plato's time was that Homer is an 
 inspired teacher, and must not be banished from the curri- 
 culum. If we get beneath the literal meaning, we find him 
 teaching the highest truth. The allegorical interpretation of 
 Homer began doubtless in the spirit of apology for revered 
 scriptures found to conflict with modern notions ; but it soon 
 became an instrument of historical research and metaphysical 
 speculation.^ Few were content to confine themselves with 
 Plutarch to the plain ethical lessons to be drawn from Homer 
 and the poets as picturing human life and nature — to read, 
 for example, the story of The Intrigue of Aphrodite and Ares, 
 if not simply for the story, at any rate for nothing more 
 
 ^ He was alive in 479 B.C. ; see Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, p. 
 111. 
 
 2 On the allegorisation of Homer, beginning with Theagenes, see Lobeck, 
 Aglaoph. pp. 155 if. ; the feeling which prompted it is expressed in the 
 aphorism, "Ομηροι ykp -ησέβησβν, ei μτ] ήλληΎόρησβν. 
 
 ^ — and perhaps also of literary embellishment. "Ion's allusion to his embel- 
 lishments of Homer, in which he declares himself to have surpassed Metrodorus 
 of Lampsacus and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, seems to show that, like them, he 
 belonged to the allegorical school of interpreters" (Jowett's Introduction to 
 the Ion). 
 
 J 
 
232 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 abstruse than the lesson that luxury leads to such intrigue.-^ 
 Such simple teaching did not satisfy either the historians or 
 the philosophers. 
 
 The Centaurs (Palaephatus tells us) were a body of young 
 men from the village of Nephele in Thessaly, who first trained 
 and mounted horses for the purpose of repelling a herd of bulls 
 belonging to Ixion, King of the Lapithae, which had run wild 
 and done great damage ; they pursued these wild bulls on horse- 
 back, and pierced them with their spears, thus acquiring both 
 the name of Prickers (Kevropes) and the imputed attribute of joint 
 body with the horse. Aktaeon was an Arcadian, who neglected 
 the cultivation of his land for the pleasures of hunting, and was 
 thus eaten up by the expense of his hounds. The dragon whom 
 Kadmus killed at Thebes was in reality Drake, King of Thebes ; 
 and the dragon's teeth which he was said to have sown, and from 
 whence sprung a crop of armed men, were in point of fact 
 elephants' teeth, which Kadmus as a rich Phoenician had brought 
 over with him : the sons of Drake sold these elephants' teeth and 
 employed the proceeds to levy troops against Kadmus. Daedalus, 
 instead of flying across the sea on wings, had escaped from Krete 
 in a swift sailing-boat under a violent storm; Kottus, Briareus, 
 and Gyg^s were not persons with one hundred hands, but inhabit- 
 ants of the village of Hekatoncheiria in Upper Macedonia, who 
 warred with the inhabitants of Mount Olympus against the 
 Titans ; Scylla, whom Odysseus so narrowly escaped, was a fast- 
 sailing piratical vessel, as was also Pegasus, the alleged winged 
 horse of Bellerophon.^ 
 
 ^ Plutarch, de Audiendis Poetis, c. 4. The de Aud. Poet, is worth careful 
 study in connection with the allegorisation of Homer, against which it is a 
 protest. On the one hand. Poetry is to be read for the entertainment which 
 may be derived from a "good story" simply as a "good story" ; thus Homer 
 bids Odysseus look carefully at the things in Hades, in order that he may go 
 and tell his wife about them — 
 
 αλλά φόωσδβ τάχιστα XCXaieo, ταύτα 5k ττάντα 
 ϊσθ\ 'ίνα καΐ μετόπισθε Tcy (ϊττησθα ^υναίκί. 
 καΐ yap τούτο χαρίέντω$ "Ομηροι els ττ]ν νεκνίαν eiirev, ώ? yvvaLKo^ άκρόασιν οΰσαν 
 δια δ-ή τό μvθώδ€s (c. 2). On the other hand. Poetry is to be read for the lessons 
 in morality and worldly wisdom which may be learnt from the characters and 
 conduct of the personages portrayed ; but let not the young think that these 
 personages are abstract types — all-good or all-bad ; the poets draw for us real 
 men, mixed of good and bad qualities. Poetry is μίμησι$ ηθών καΐ βίων καΐ 
 ανθρώπων ού τελείων ούδ^ καθαρών . . . άλλα μεμι^μένων ττάθεσι και δόξαίί 
 ψενδέσι, διά δέ εύφϋί'αν αυτούς ττοΧλάκΐί μετατιθέντων πρόί τό κρεΐττον (c. 8). 
 These are the advantages to be derived from Poetry. We must partake of it 
 with caution, however, for it is like the polypus — pleasant to eat, but often gives 
 bad dreams (c. 1). 
 
 It ought to be noted that, where Egyptian Myths are concerned, Plutarch 
 does not eschew the method of allegorical interpretation ; but see remarks on 
 de Is. et Osir. § 78, in Prof. Dill's Roman Society in the Last Century of the 
 Western Empire, pp. 76, 77. 
 
 2 Grote's Hist, of Greece, part i. ch. 16, vol. i. pp. 342, 343, edit. 1862. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 233 
 
 While those interested in history adopted this method of 
 " natural explanation " ^ in dealing with Myths, the philo- 
 sophers adopted the method to which it is best to confine the 
 description " allegorical interpretation." Homer's whole story, 
 and the proper names which occur in it, have a hidden 
 religious, philosophical, scientific meaning which it is the 
 work of the method to unfold, by discovering analogies and 
 etymologies. So far as etymologies were concerned, this 
 method probably owed something to the lead given by Plato 
 himself in the Cratylus ; but while Plato's etymologies are 
 put forward playfully, and as it were δ^ά μ.νθο\ο^ία<ζ, the 
 etymologies of the Stoics and other allegorisers of Myth seem 
 to be seriously offered as the meanings which Homer really 
 had in his mind when he used the names. " Magnam suscepit 
 molestiam," says Cicero,^ " et minime necessariam Zeno primus, 
 post Cleanthes, deinde Chrysippus, commenticiarum fabularum 
 reddere rationem, et vocabulorum cur quidque ita appellatum 
 sit causas explicare." Two examples of the Stoic method will 
 be sufficient, with a general reference to Zeller's Stoics, 
 Epicureans, and Sceptics, pp. 334 ff. (Eng. TransL). 
 
 The One God, of Many J^ames, ττόλυώνυμος, is called 
 Zeus άτΓο του ζην : as manifested in air, is called Hera, from 
 άηρ: as manifested in water, is called Poseidon, from ττόσίς: as 
 manifested in aether, is called Athena, from αίθηρ : and so on.^ 
 
 " If Hephaestus," says Heraclitus the Stoic, " intended the 
 shield of Achilles to be a representation of this world, what 
 else is thereby meant but that, by the influence of primary 
 fire, matter has been shaped into a world ? " ^ 
 
 ^ See Zeller's Stoics, EpicureaTis, arid Sceptics, p. 335, n. 1, Engl. Trausl. 
 
 2 Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 24, 63. 
 
 ^ Diog. Laert. vii. 147. 
 
 4 See Zeller's Stoics, etc., p. 340, Eng. TransL "The Stoics," says Dr. Bigg 
 (The Christian Flatonists of Alexandria, p. 146), "assur'e us that the heathen 
 deities are but symbols of the forces of nature, and turn the hideous myths 
 of Zeus or Dionysus into a manual of physical science." 
 
 On the general subject of the allegorisation of Homer, both before and after 
 Plato's time, the reader may consult, in addition to Lobeck, referred to above, 
 Mr. Adam's note on Eep. 378 d, 24, with authorities cited there ; Zeller's 
 Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, pp. 334 if. , Eng. Transl. ; Jowett's Dialogues of 
 Plato, Introd. to Rep. p. xxxviii. ; and Grote's History of Greece, part i. ch. 16, 
 from which I extract the following passage (vol. i. p. 344, edit. 1862) : — 
 "It remains that we should notice the manner in which the ancient myths 
 were received and dealt with by the philosophers. The earliest expression 
 which we hear, on the part of philosophy, is the severe censure bestowed upon 
 them on ethical grounds by Ainophanes of Kolophon, and seemingly by some 
 others of his contemporaries. It was apparently in reply to such charges, which 
 
/f 
 
 234 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 The Jews, Palestinian and Alexandrine, before and after 
 Philo's time,^ following the lead given by the Greek inter- 
 preters of Homer, applied the allegorical method to the Old 
 Testament scriptures. One may estimate the length to which 
 allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament was carried by 
 θβρατΓβυταί ^ and others before Philo's time from the circum- 
 stance that even Philo himself was alarmed. The allegorising 
 of the Law, he thought, makes for laxity in the observance of 
 it.^ The wise man will loth seek out the hidden meaning, 
 and observe the letter of the Law. He will allegorise without 
 breaking with old custom.'^ But where the allegorisation, not 
 of the Law, but of the History of the Old Testament scrip- 
 tures, is concerned, Philo proceeds without fear. At once an 
 ardent Platonist and a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he assumed 
 the substantial accuracy of the narrative of events given in 
 the Old Testament from the creation of the world downwards 
 throughout the whole history of his Eace ; and, at the same 
 time, he believed that the history of his Eace was not mere 
 history — it was philosophy, or rather theology, as well as 
 
 did not admit of being directly rebutted, that Theagenes of Rbegium (about 
 δ20 Β. c. ) first started the idea of a double meaning in the Homeric and Hesiodic 
 narratives — an interior sense, different from that which the words in their 
 obvious meaning bore, yet to a certain extent analogous, and discoverable 
 by sagacious divination. Upon this principle he allegorised especially the battle 
 of the Gods in the Iliad. In the succeeding century, Anaxagoras and Metro- 
 dorus carried out the allegorical explanation more comprehensivelv^^nd 
 systematically ; tho-, ibrmw j:er)j:esenting t |ie mythical Ti^ jflftnag-es lasfmerj 
 mental com^tionsfi nvested wjth^ η and gen dq^ and illustrative" ot"' erhical 
 pr^^^^ts^^^nnHLatter coTTnecting ibhem witA'ViySifeal'^principles and p haenomen a. 
 Metrodorus resolved not only the persons oTZeus, HefoT and Ath^fe^,**!!! also 
 those of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hector, into various elemental combinations 
 and physical afTronn.jp^^^Qn^^j-^y^|^jjori -n^o ori-.rQr>fnT-oo as cribcd to them as naturai 
 facts.concg^ edj^ der t Ke^ veil ol aTTegory^ Empedocjis, rrodicus', Antisthenes,! 
 Parmemaes" €lSracTel()tB ot Jfontus, and, in a later age, Chrysippus and tha 
 Stoic philosophersgeiisEally, followed nj ^re or less the same principle o f treating! 
 thepopularGods^ a^ allegorical persona ges ; while the expositors ot Homer (such 
 as ■STei3lIffbiOtus3'»Gl§;ucdn, and others, even down to the Alexandrine age), 
 though none of them proceeded to the same extreme length as Metrodorus, 
 employed allegory amongst other media of explanation for the purpose of 
 solving difficulties, or eluding reproaches against the poet." 
 
 Grote, in a footnote (p. 345, n. 1) to the foregoing passage, calls attention 
 to the ethical turn given to the stories of Circe, the Sirens, and Scylla, by 
 Xenophon, Mem. i. 3, 7, and ii. 6, 11-31. 
 
 1 The allegorising Jewish school began two hundred years before Philo (fl. 
 A.D. 39) ; see Gfrorer, Urchristenthum, i. 83. 
 
 2 See Conybeare's Fhilo, de Vita Contemplativa, p. 293 : the θεραττβνταί (also 
 called Ικέται, cultores deum — ascetic Jewish congregations or guilds) allegorised 
 the Pentateuch. This was necessary in order to make Gentile converts, who 
 looked for Plato in Moses. 
 
 2 See Conybeare's Philo, de Vita Cont. pp. 300, 301. 
 ^ See Gfrorer, Urchristenthum, i. 104. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 235 
 
 history. The events recorded were not only true in fact ; 
 they constituted also a continuous revelation of hidden meaning. 
 He looked at the history of his Eace both as a chronicle of 
 actual events, and as a great miracle-play in which dogma 
 was put on the stage of this visible world. This double 
 point of view is very difficult to enter into ; but we must 
 enter into it, so far, at least, as to treat it very seriously, if 
 we are to understand the " tendency " of certain currents of 
 religious and philosophical thought which have prevailed since 
 his day, even down to the present time. Here is a passage 
 from his book de Sacrificiis Ahelis et Caini} in which the 
 allegorical interpretation of " sacred history " reminds us of 
 the method by which not only " sacred history " but tradi- 
 tional dogma is, in our own day, being rewritten as 
 " philosophy " : — 
 
 For Abraham, coming with great haste and alacrity, com- 
 mands Virtue, Sarah, to hasten and ferment three measures of meal, 
 and to make cakes under the ashes, when God, attended by two 
 Supreme Powers (ήνίκα 6 Qehs 8ορνφορονμ€νο? virh Sveiv των άνωτάτω 
 8υνάμ€ων), Dominion and Goodness, Himself one in the middle, 
 produced three images in the visual soul {οραηκ-^ Ψ'^Χό\ e^^h of 
 which it is impossible to measure (for His Powers also are not to 
 be circumscribed), but Ithey measure all things. His Goodness is 
 the measure of the good. His Dominion the measure of things sub- 
 ject ; and the Ruler Himself the measure of every thing corporeal 
 and incorporeal. ... It is good for these three measures to be 
 fermented, as it were, and commingled in the soul, that being 
 persuaded of the existence of a supreme God, who surpasses His 
 Powers, and is either seen without them, or appears with them, 
 it may receive impressions of His might and beneficence, and 
 be initiated in the most perfect mysteries (των τελιών μνστι? 
 
 γβνομΑνη). 
 
 In the Old Testament history, then, Philo recognises at 
 once a higher, or mystic, and a historical, or literal, sense — 
 ή Βί υτΓονοία^ άττοΒοσις — ή άΧλη'γορία, and ή ρητή 
 Βιη^ησι^''^ The personages in the book of Genesis are at once 
 historical, and τρόττοο ψνχής. Adam is άνθρωττος 'γη'γβνης ; 
 the fact of his existence is historical, but the details of his 
 history are mythical, and must be interpreted allegorically : 
 
 1 De Sacrif. Ah. et (Mini, (15), 59, ed. Cohn, p. 173, Mangey. 
 2 Gfrorer, o.c. i. 84. 
 
236 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 thus his rib is μυθώΒβς — nobody can take it literally.^ Noah 
 is justice, Enoch hope, Moses λόγο? ττροφήτης. Similarly, 
 Egypt is the body, Canaan piety.^ Again — and here Philo's 
 Platonism prevails — it was not God, but the λόγο?, who 
 appeared in the burning bush.^ Spiritual men are satisfied, 
 he says, with the truth that God exists ; but the ττοΧλοί need /' 
 an anthropomorphic God. Moses gives God feet and hands, 
 on account of the weak understanding of his readers. This 
 is as it ought to be. Moses is like the physician who must 
 keep his patient in ignorance of the truth. But for the 
 f educated reader such representations of God are dangerous. 
 ' They lead to Atheism, and the only true method of dealing 
 .with them is that of Allegory.^ The allegorical wisdom, 
 the possession of the few wise, is compared by Philo to the 
 Hellenic Mysteries : ταύτα ω μ,ύσταυ κβκαθαρμίνού τα ωτα, 
 ώς lepa όντως μυστήρια τταρα^ί'χβσθβ. Here, of course, 
 Philo borrows directly from Plato,^ who often compares 
 Philosophy, especially when Myth is its vehicle, to initiation, 
 as in Sympos. 209 E, 210 a, and in Phaedrus, 249 c, 250 3."^ 
 But it is only a phrase that Philo borrows from Plato. 
 What a Myth is Philo does not understand. A Myth is 
 indeed a mystery and remains a mystery. Philo and his 
 following are only concerned to make it something under- 
 stood. 
 
 For the employment of the method of allegorical interpre- 
 tation by the Christian Fathers I cannot do better than 
 refer the reader generally to Dr. Bigg's Christian Platonists of 
 Alexandria, especially to Lecture iv., and to Hatch's HMert 
 Lectures, 1888, Lecture iii., on Greek and Christian Exegesis. 
 To these references I would add a quotation from Professor 
 G. Adam Smith's Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the 
 Old Testament, pp. 226-228 : — 
 
 The early fathers were interested in the Old Testament 
 mainly for its types and predictions of Christ. The allegorical 
 became the orthodox exegesis, and was at last reduced to a theory 
 
 1 Gfrorer, ox. i. 98, 99. 2 Gfrorer, o.c. i. 88. 
 
 ^ Gfrorer, o.c. i. 87. •* Gfrorer, o.c. i. 97. 
 
 ^ Philo, de cherubim, Mang. i. 147 ; Gfrorer, Urchristenthum, i. 100. 
 ^ As he does also at the end of the passage quoted above from the de Sacrif. 
 Ah. et Cain. 
 
 ^ See Couturat, de Platonis Mythis, p. 55. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 237 
 
 by Origen, and elaborated into a system by the school which he 
 founded. . . . When the heretics began to outdo the orthodox in 
 allegorical exposition, the latter awoke to the dangers of the habit 
 they had fostered, and loudly proclaimed the need of sobriety and 
 reason in the pursuit of it. But the historical sense of the age 
 was small, and till the close of the 4th century no exegete suc- 
 ceeded in finding his feet on a sound historical basis. [Theodore 
 of Mopsuestia (350-429) was the father of historical exegesis.] 
 To Theodore the types and prophecies of the Old Testament had, 
 besides their references to the future, a prior value in themselves 
 and for the age in which they were delivered.^ 
 
 It is perhaps worth reminding the reader that the Christian 
 Fathers had high authority for their allegorical interpretation 
 of the Holy Scriptures. St. Paul {Gal, iv. 22-26) had author- 
 ised such interpretation : — 
 
 It is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond- 
 maid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman 
 was born after the flesh ; but he of the freewoman was by promise. 
 Which things are an allegory (arti/do ko-nv άλλη-γ ο ρουμάνα) : for 
 these are the two covenants ; the one from the Mount Sinai, which 
 gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is Mount 
 Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is 
 in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is 
 free, which is the mother of us all.^ 
 
 In the Philosophy of Plotinus and the !N'eo- Platonic 
 School the allegorical interpretation of Myths— especially 
 of those which describe and account for the Fall and 
 Ascension of Souls after the manner of the Phaedrus Myth 
 and the Discourse of Diotima — holds a position the import- 
 ance of which it -would be difficult for the student of the 
 development of religious thought to exaggerate. Έο more 
 can be attempted here than to give a general idea of the 
 
 ^ Chrysostom, in his ερμηνεία of Isaiah (vol. vi. p. 17, ed. Montfaucon), 
 took the same line : — ^γώ δ^, he says, ovre ταύτψ ατιμάζω την έξή^ησιν (the alle- 
 gorical), καΐ την έτέραν (the historical) άληθινεστέραν €Ϊναί φημι. Commenting 
 on the new line of exegesis taken by Theodore and Chrysostom, Professor G. 
 Adam Smith brings out its significance in one admirable sentence (p. 231) : 
 " Recognise that the fundamental meaning of the prophecies must be that which 
 they bore to the living generation to whom they were first addressed, and you 
 are at once inspired by their message to the men of your own time." 
 
 2 Similarly in 1 Peter iii. Noah's ark, wherein "eight souls were saved by 
 water," is allegorically interpreted as Baptism. In the Old Testament, Hosea 
 (xii. 1-5) allegorises, according^© the writer of art. "Allegorical Interpretation" 
 in the Jewish Eiieycl. 
 
f 
 
 238 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Neo- Platonic method of dealing with these Myths ; and 
 perhaps the following specimens may be sufficient for this 
 purpose. 
 
 Plotinus {Enn. iv. 3. 13), adhering to the Orphic doctrine 
 which Plato sets forth in the Phaedrus Myth, speaks of the 
 Descent of Souls into the bodies prepared for them as taking 
 place, for each Soul, at an appointed time : — καΙ άΧΚος dWy 
 'χρόνος, ου Trapa^yevo μενού οίον κηρνκος καΧοϋντος κατίασι 
 καΙ elaeBv eh το ττρόσφορον σώμα. Their descent, he says, 
 is fated or determined by universal law ; and yet it is free, 
 for, in embodying themselves. Souls obey a universal law 
 which is realised in themselves. They are free, as νους, 
 Intelligence, is free, for they obey the necessity which is that 
 of their own nature : — καΐ 6 μεν ττρο κόσμου νους είμαρ- 
 μενην ε'χευ την του μενειν εκεί όττόσον καΐ ττεμττειν, καΐ 
 το καθέκαστον τω καθόΧου υτΓΟΤΓίτΓΤον νόμω ττεμττεταί• 
 ey/ceiTat yap εκάστω το καθοΧου καΐ 6 νόμος ουκ έξωθεν 
 την Ισ'χυν εΙς το τεΧεσθήναι ϊσ^χ^ει, αΧΧα ΒεΒοταί εν αύτοΐς 
 γ^ρησομενοις είναι καΐ ττερίφερουσιν αυτόν. 
 
 " This Cosmos, then," he continues, " having many Lights, and 
 being illumined by Souls, receiveth beauty added unto beauty 
 from the great Gods and from the Intelligences which bestow 
 Souls. And this, methinks, is the meaning of that Myth which 
 telleth how that, when Prometheus — that is Forethought — had 
 fashioned a woman,i the other gods did thereafter adorn her : one 
 gave unto this creature of earth and water human speech, and 
 beauty as of a goddess ; and Aphrodite gave unto her one gift, 
 nd the Graces another, and all the other gods added their several 
 gifts ; and she was called Pandora, because that all gave unto her 
 who was fashioned by the Forethought of Prometheus. But 
 Avhereas Epimetheus, who is Afterthought, rejected this gift of 
 Prometheus, the Myth thereby signifieth that the choice of that 
 which partaketh more of the nature of the Intelligible is the better 
 choice. Yea, the Maker is himself bound, for he hath contact of 
 some sort with that which hath proceeded from him, and is there- 
 fore constrained by bonds which are without. But whereas 
 Heracles releaseth him from his bonds, the Myth signifieth that 
 he hath in him a Power whereby he is yet able to attain unto 
 deliverance from these bonds." ^ 
 
 1 In Hesiod, 0. et D. 49 ff. Hephaestus, not Prometheus, makes Pandora ; 
 and Prometheus warns his brother not to accept her, but he pays no heed to the 
 warning. 
 
 2 Plot. Enn. iv. 3. 14 ; and see A. Ritter, die Psychologie des Plotin (1867), 
 p. 42. Pandora is the World endowed by the Soul with ideal gifts. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 239 
 
 Another Myth from which the Neo-Platonists drew largely 
 was that of Narcissus.^ Their interpretation of this Myth 
 hinges on the identification of the " Mirror of Dionysus " with 
 the " Bowl of Dionysus." ^ The Soul remains at peace in its 
 heavenly home, till it sees its own image in the water of this 
 mirror. It plunges into the water to embrace the image, and 
 drinks forgetfulness of its heavenly estate : — ihovra yap, says 
 Plotinus {Enn. i. 6. 8), het τα iv σώμασι, κάλα μητου ττροσ- 
 Tpe^eiv, aWa jvSvTa, ως eiaiv είκονβς καΐ ϊχνη καΐ σκίαί, 
 φβύ^βιν ττρος ifceivo ου ταύτα βίκονβς. el yap τις έττιΒράμοί 
 \αβ€Ϊν βουΧόμβνος ως αληθινον, οία βΙΒώΧου κάλου €ή> 
 νΒατος ο'χρυμίνου, ου Χαββΐν βουΧηθβίς, ως ιτού τυς 
 μύθος, Βοκώ μοι, αΐνίττβται, Βύς βίς το κάτω του ρεύματος 
 αφανής iyeveTO, τον αύτον Βη τρόττον 6 εγρμενος των καλών 
 σωμάτων καΐ μη άφίβίς, ου τω σώματι, Trj Be ψνχβ κατα- 
 Βύσεταυ εις σκοτεινά καΐ άτβρττη τω νω βάθη, ένθα τυφλός 
 iv αΒου μίνων καΐ ενταύθα κάκεΐ σκιαΐς σύνεσται, φευ- 
 ηωμεν Βη φίλην ες ττατρίΒα, άΧηθεστερον αν τις τταρα- 
 κεΧεύοιτο. τις οΰν ή φυγή ; κ.τ.Χ. : and again, in Έηη. iv. 
 3. 12, he says — άνθρώττων Βε '^^υ'χαί εϊΒωΧα αυτών ΙΒοΰσαι 
 οίον Διονύσου εν κατότττρω εκεί iyevovTO άνωθεν ορμηθεΐσαι 
 ουκ άτΓοτμηθεΐσαι ούΒ* αύται της εαυτών άρ'χ^ης τε και νου. 
 ου yap μετά νου ηλθον, αλλ' έφθασαν μεν μέχρι γης, 
 κάρα Βε αύταΐς εστηρικται ύττεράνω του ουρανού. ττΧεον 
 Βε αύταΐς κατεΧθεΐν συμβεβηκεν, οτι το μέσον αύταΐς ην- 
 ayκάσθη φροντίΒος Βεομενου του εις ο έφθασαν φροντίσαι, 
 Ζευς Βε ττατηρ ελεησας ττονουμένας θνητά αυτών τά Βεσμά 
 'ποιών Ίτερί α ττονοΰνται ΒίΒωσιν άναιταύΧας εν χρόνοις 
 ΊΓΟίών σωμάτων ελευθέρας, ϊν εχοιεν εκεί καΐ αύται 
 yLvεσθaι, ούττερ ή του τταντος "ψυχή άεΐ ούΒεν τά τ7]Βε 
 ετΓίστρεφομενη.^ Souls, then, descending, at their appointed 
 
 ^ See Ovid, Met. iii., and Pausanias, ix. 31, for this Myth. 
 
 2 See Macrobius, in Somn. i. 12. Q6: " Hoc est quod Plato notavit in Phaedone 
 animum in corpus trahi nova ebrietate trepidantem, volens novum potum materialis 
 alluvionis intelligi, quo gravata deducitur. Arcaui hujus indicium est Liberi 
 Patris crater ille sidereus, et hoc est, quod veteres Lethaeum fluvium vocaveruut,< 
 ipsum autem Liberum Patrem Orphai'ci νουν ύλικόν suspicantur intelligi." Lobeck,' 
 who quotes this passage from Macrobius {Aglaoph. p. 736), criticises it as departing ^ 
 from the original conception of the κρατήρ, which is that of the bowl in which Plato's 
 Demiurgus mixes the ingredients, first of the World-Soul, and then of human souls. 
 
 ^ See Lobeck {Aglaoph. p. 555, for the place of the κάτοτττρον in the Zagreus 
 Myth ; and Rohde (Psyche, ii. 117) for Zagreus as a type, along with Narcissus,^ 
 of the passage of the Unity o& the World -Principle into the multiplicity of 
 sensible phenomena. 
 
240 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 times, come to the water which is the κάτοτττρον Δ^ίονύσον, 
 and enamoured of their own images reflected therein — that 
 is, of their mortal bodies — plunge into the water. This 
 water is the water of oblivion, of Χηθη, and they that drink 
 of it go down into the σττηΧαων — the cave of this world.^ 
 The wise soul drinks moderately ; for to drink deeply is to 
 lose all άνάμνησι,ς of the intelligible world. T he wise soul is 
 t hus the "dry" soul — ξηρή ψυχή, as the phrase of Heraclitus^ 
 seems to be understood by the Neo-Platonists who quote it.^ 
 The dry soul hearkens, in this life, to the genius who accom- 
 panies her in her κάθοδος : but, over all the genii of particular 
 souls, Eros rules as summus genius. Creuzer* mentions a 
 picture in which Narcissus is represented as gazing at his 
 own image in the water, and the Heavenly Eros as standing 
 with a sad countenance behind him. " I^arcissus adolescens," 
 says Ficino,^ "id est, temerarii et imperiti hominis animus, sui 
 vultum non aspicit ; propriam sui substantiam et virtutem 
 nequaquam animadvertit ; sed ejus umbram in aqua pro- 
 sequitur et amplecti conatur : id est, pulchritudinem in fragili 
 corpore, et instar aquae fluentis, quae ipsius animi umbra est, 
 admiratur." 
 
 The moral ofjtiie Narcissus Myth is : Free thyself by 
 " ecstasy " from lihelife of flux and sensible appearance — 
 escape from the'^Stre^'orPleasure and the Flesh- — ή ρευστή 
 του βνύΧου σώματος φύσις ^ — the Stream of Generation, which 
 is the " Mirror of Dionysus." ^ 
 
 With the Myth of Narcissus thus allegorised, the Neo- 
 Platonists brought the story of Odysseus into very close 
 relation. Thus the passage quoted above from JEnn. i. 6. 8, in 
 which the immersion of the Soul in the Stream of Sense is 
 described, is immediately followed by a passage in which the 
 deliverance from that stream is compared to the flight of 
 
 ^ ψ^Χν 'f'*^ δεσ/χόί ro σώμα και τάφοί και 6 κόσμο$ αύτχί σιτηΚαιον καΐ &Ρτρορ, 
 Plot. Εηη. iv. 8. 3 ; and cf. iv. 8. 1, where the doctrine of the Fall or Incarna- 
 tion of Souls, as set forth by Plato in the Phaedrus and TiTnaeus and by Em- 
 pedocles, is reviewed. 
 
 2 See Bywater's HeracUti Eph. Reliquiae, Ixxiv. Ixxv. 
 
 •^ See Creuzer, Plotinus de Pulch. p. xxxvi. 
 
 ^ Plot, de Pulch. p. Ixiii. 
 
 ^ Ficinus, in Plat. Sympos. cap. 17, quoted by Creuzer, Plot, de Pulch. 
 p. Ixviii. 
 
 δ See Creuzer, Plot, de Pulch. pp. Ivi. Ivii. 
 
 ' I take it that the κάτοτττρον Αιονύσον of the Neo-Platonists is due to a 
 ** conflation " of the Narcissus Myth and the Zagreus-Dionysus Myth. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 241 
 
 Odysseus from the enchantments of Circe and Calypso : — 
 Tt? ουν ή φνγη ; καΧ ττώ? άναξόμβθα ; οίον άττο μά'γον 
 }ζ.ίρκη<ί φησίν η }ζ.αΧυψον<; Όδυσσει;? αΐνυττόμενος, Βοκ€Ϊ 
 μοι, μβΐναι ουκ άρεσθεί^;, καίτοι €'χων ήΒονας Bl ομμάτων 
 και κάλΧβι τΓολλώ αίσθητφ σννών. ττατρίς 8τ) ημίν, όθεν 
 ΊταρηΚθομβν, καΐ ττατηρ €Κ€Ϊ. τΐ9 ουν 6 στόΧος καϊ rf 
 ψυ^γη ; ου ττοσΐ Sec Βιανύσαΐ' τταντα^ου yap φίρουσι 
 ΤΓοδε? 67γΙ yrjv άΧΧην α/π αΧΧης' ούΒέ σε Bel ϊττττων 
 ο^ημα η τι θαΧάττιον τταρασκβυάσαι, άλλα ταύτα ττάντα 
 άφεΐναι Ββΐ καϊ μη βΧβιτΕίν, άΧΧ οίον μύσαντα όψιν άΧΧην 
 άΧΧάξασθαι καϊ aveyeipai, ην €'χ€ΐ μεν ττά?, 'χρώνται Be 
 oXiyoi. 
 
 Similarly, Numenius (quoted by Porphyry, de Ant Nymph. 
 cap. 34) ^ makes Odysseus the image of νους gradually, through 
 various incarnations, freeing itself from the flesh — εικόνα του 
 Bia της εφεξής yεvεσεως ερχ^ομενου, καϊ οΰτως άττοκαθ- 
 ιστάμενου εΙς τους εξω τταντος κΧύΒωνος και θαΧάσσης 
 άττείρους. 
 
 Again, a Pythagorean quoted by Stobaeus, JEc. Phys. i. 52, 
 p. 1044, ssijs /Ομηρος Βε την εν κύκΧω ττερίοΒον καϊ ττεριφοραν 
 7raXιyyεvεσiaς Κίρκην 7Γpoσηy6pευκεv, ΉΧιου ιταΐΒα : and 
 Eustathius, on Od. i. 51, says, 6τι την ΚαΧυψώ, ει μεν 
 βασίΧισσα καϊ ην οι yεωypaφoΰvτες τταραΒιΒόασι, μικρά 
 7Γεpιεpyάζovτaι οι τταΧαιοί. μεταττΧάττονται Βε αυτήν τη 
 aXXηyopιa εις το καθ* ημάς σώμα, ώς συyκaXύ7ΓToυσav 
 εντός Βίκην εΧύτρου τον ψυχ^ικον μάpyapov^ ήτις καϊ αυτή 
 κατεΐ'χε τον φιΧοσοφον 'Οδυσσέα, ώς άνθρωττον ενΒεΒεμενον 
 σαρκι. καϊ μυθικώς ειττεΐν, εν άμφιρύτη νήσω οντά 
 ΒενΒρηεσση, ήτις ομφαΧός εστί ΘαΧάσσης, τουτέστιν εν 
 \jyp(u σώματι οντι, καϊ ώς αν 6 ΤΐΧάτων εϊττη, εττιρρύτω 
 καϊ άτΓορρύτω (Timaeus, 43 α). . . . Έρμου μεντοι, ώς 
 εν τοις μετά ταύτα αΐνίξεται 6 ττοιητής, μεσιτεύοντος, 6 
 εστί Xoyoυ, yεyovε τής κατά την φιΧοσοφίαν ττοθουμενης 
 ττατρίΒος, ήyoυv του νοητού κόσμου, 6ς εστί κατά τους 
 ΤΐΧατωνικούς ψυχρών ττατρϊς άΧηθής' ομοίως yεyovε καϊ τής 
 ΤΙηνεΧοττης, φιΧοσοφίας, Χυθεϊς καϊ ά'7ΓaXXayεϊς τής τοιαύτης 
 ΚαΧυψοΰς. With words to the same effect Apuleius closes 
 his treatise de Deo Socratis : — " Ήβο aliud te in eodem Ulixe 
 Homerus docet, qui semper ei comitem voluit esse prudentiam: 
 
 1 See Creuzer, Plot, de Pulch. p. Ixxii. 
 
 Κ 
 
242 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 quam poetico ritu Minervam nuncupavit. Igitur, hac eadem 
 comitante, omnia horrenda subiit, omnia adversa superavit. 
 Quippe, ea adjutrice, Cyclopis specus introivit, sed egressus 
 est : Solis boves vidit, sed abstinuit : ad Inferos demeavit, sed 
 adscendit. Eadem sapientia comitante, Scyllam praeter 
 navigavit, nee ereptus est : Charybdi conseptus est, nee 
 retentus est : Circae poculum bibit, nee mutatus est : ad Loto- 
 phagos accessit, nee remansit : Sirenas audiit, nee accessit." ^ 
 
 Beautiful as the Neo-Platonic allegorisation often is, I 
 venture to think that the less we associate it with our reading 
 of Plato's Myths the better. The Neo-Platonists did not 
 understand the difference between Myth and Allegory. Alle- 
 gory is Dogma in picture-writing ; but Myth is not Dogma, 
 and does not convey Dogma. Dogma is gained and main- 
 tained by Dialectic, which, as Stallbaum says (note on Rep. 
 614 b), " cannot be applied to the elucidation of the subjects 
 with which Myth deals, any more than it can, at the other 
 end of the series, be applied to the elucidation of the particulars 
 of sense, as such." 
 
 For light in understanding Plato's Myths, it is to the 
 independent creations of other great μυθοΊτοιοί, such as Dante, 
 that we must go, not to the allegorical interpretations of the 
 Neo-Platonists and their like.^ 
 
 What Plato himself thinks of allegorical interpretation 
 we know from a passage near the beginning of the Fhaedrus 
 (229): — In reply to the question of Phaedrus, whether he 
 thinks that the story about Orithyia being snatched away by 
 Boreas from the height overlooking the Ilissus is a true story, 
 Socrates says, that if he took the learned line, he might 
 answer, " Yes, it may be true that once upon a time a girl 
 called Orithyia was blown by the wind over the cliff and 
 killed." But such rationalism, imposing and ponderous, is 
 I surely not very happy as a method, for if you begin to employ 
 it, where are you to stop ? You will have to rationalise all 
 the stories in Greek mythology, expending a great deal of 
 matter-of-fact cleverness on an interminable task, and leaving 
 
 1 Bacon's allegorical interpretation of three myths — that of Pan, that of 
 Perseus, and that of Dionysus — in his de Augmentis Sdentiarum, ii. cap. 13, is 
 worth comparing with the Neo-Platonic examples given above. 
 
 2 For Zeller's opinion of the Neo-Platonic interpretation of Diotima's Myth 
 in the Sympos. see his Plato, p. 194, n. 66 (Engl. Transl.). 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 243 
 
 no time for anything worth doing. As for himself, he declares 
 that, not yet having satisfied the Delphic injunction, " Know 
 thyself," he should be acting ridiculously if he spent his 
 precious time over the interpretation of these stories : he is 
 willing to receive them as they are told, and believe them 
 just as other people believe them.^ 
 
 Dr. Westcott, in his charming and suggestive essay on 
 " The Myths of Plato " (the first of his Essays in the History of 
 Religious Thought in the West), to which every student of the 
 subject must feel himself under great obligation, contrasts 
 Myth and Allegory in the following words : — 
 
 In the allegory the thought is grasped first and by itself, and 
 is then arranged in a particular dress. In the myth, thought and 
 form come into being together : the thought is the vital principle 
 which shapes the form ; the form is the sensible image which 
 displays the thought. The allegory is the conscious work of an 
 individual fashioning the image of a truth which he has seized. 
 The myth is the unconscious growth of a common mind, which 
 witnesses to the fundamental laws by which its development is 
 ruled. The meaning of an allegory is prior to the construction 
 of the story : the meaning of a myth is first capable of being 
 separated from the expression in an age long after that in which 
 it had its origin. 
 
 It will be understood that I do not agree with the sugges- 
 
 , tion contained in the last sentence. I do not recognise the 
 
 competence of interpretation to separate the " meaning " from 
 
 1 Grote, Hist, of Greece, part i. ch. xvi. vol. i. pp. 362 ff. (ed. 1862), has re- 
 marks of exceptional value on this passage, and generally on Plato's attitude to the 
 old mythology. "Plato," he says, "discountenances all attempts to transform 
 the myths by interpretation into history or philosophy, indirectly recognising 
 the generic diflference between them. ... He shares the current faith, without 
 any suspicion or criticism, as to Orpheus, Palamedes, Daedalus, Amphion, 
 Theseus, Achilles, Chiron, and other mythical personages ; but what chiefly 
 fills his mind is the inherited sentiment of deep reverence for these superhuman 
 characters and for the age to which they belonged. . . . The more we examine 
 this sentiment, both in the mind of Plato, as well as in that of the Greeks 
 generally, the more shall we be convinced that it formed essentially and insepar- 
 ably a portion of Hellenic religious faith. The myth both presupposes, and 
 springs out of, a settled basis and a strong expansive force of religious, social, 
 and patriotic feeling, operating upon a past which is little better than a blank as 
 to positive knowledge. It resembles history, in so far as its form is narrative ; 
 it resembles philosophy, in so far as it is occasionally illustrative ; but in its 
 essence and substance, in the mental tendencies by which it is created, as well as 
 in those by which it is judged and upheld, it is the popularised expression of the 
 divine and heroic faith of the people." See further, vol. i. pp. 370 if., for a 
 summary of Grote's whole discussion of Greek Myths in part i. of his Hist, 
 of Greece. I am acquainted wifh no discussion of them which appears to me so 
 informing and suggestive as Grote's. 
 
244 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 the " expression " of a Myth. I hold that Myth has no 
 dogmatic meaning behind its literal sense. Its " meaning " 
 is, first, its literal sense — the story which is told; and then, 
 beyond this, the feeling which it calls up and regulates. The 
 further one is removed from the age in which a Myth had its 
 origin, the more difficult it must be to recover its " meaning " 
 of this second sort — that is, the feeling which it called up and 
 regulated in its maker and his immediate audience. Our task 
 is not the facile one of reading our own doctrines into a Myth 
 which has come down to us, but the vastly difficult one of 
 entering sympathetically into the life of a prophet in a bygone 
 world. 
 
 While the conversion of old narratives, mythical or 
 historical, into Allegories has most often been the congenial 
 work of prosaic persons, ά<γροίκω tcvI σοφία χρώμενοι, it has 
 sometimes been taken up by the great poets themselves with 
 happy effect. Let me conclude this part of the subject with 
 one instance of this — Dante's beautiful allegorisation of the 
 story of the three Marys at the Sepulchre : — 
 
 Mark saith that Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of 
 James, and Mary Salome went to find the Saviour at the 
 Sepulchre and found Him not, but found a young man clothed 
 in a white garment, who said unto them : "Ye seek the Saviour ; 
 I say unto you that He is not here ; but be not affrighted ; go 
 and tell His disciples and Peter, that He will go before them into 
 Galilee ; and there shall ye see Him, as He said unto you." 
 
 By these three women are signified the three sects of the 
 active life, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, which 
 go unto the Sepulchre, to wit, this present World, which is the 
 receptacle of corruptible things, and seek for the Saviour, to wit, 
 beatitude, and find it not ; but they find a young man clothed in 
 a white garment, who, according to the testimony of Matthew and 
 also of the others, was the Angel of God ; thus, Matthew saith^ 
 " The Angel of God descended from heaven, and came and rolled 
 back the stone and sat upon it, and his countenance was like 
 lightning, and his raiment like snow." 
 
 This Angel is the Nobility of our Human Nature which 
 cometh, as it is said, from God, and speaketh in our Eeason, and 
 saith unto each of these sects — that is, unto every man who seeketh 
 beatitude in the active life — "It is not here; but go and tell the 
 disciples and Peter" — that is, those who go about seeking it, and 
 those who have erred from the right way, like Peter who had 
 denied Him — " that He will go before them into Galilee " — that 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 245 
 
 is, that beatitude will go before them into Galilee — that is, into 
 the life of Contemplation. Galilee signifieth whiteness] and as 
 whiteness is more full of corporeal light than any other colour, 
 so is Contemplation more full of spiritual light than any other 
 thing here below. And he saith, " will go before " : he saith not, 
 "shall be with you"; thus giving us to understand that God 
 alway goeth before our Contemplation ; here can we never over- 
 take Him who is our highest beatitude. And he saith, "There 
 shall ye see Him, as He said " — that is, there ye shall have of His 
 joy, to wit, felicity, as it is promised unto you here — that is, as it 
 is surely ordained that ye may possess it. 
 
 Thus it appeareth that we can find our beatitude (which is 
 this felicity of which we speak), first imperfect in the active life, 
 that is, in the conduct of the moral virtues, and then perfect — 
 after a certain fashion — in the conduct of the intellectual virtues.^ 
 
 Hitherto we have considered the allegorical interpretation 
 of narratives, mythical or historical, which the interpreters 
 found ready to hand. Let us now pass to narratives 
 deliberately constructed for the illustration of doctrine or 
 the inculcation of moral conduct. When doctrine is illus-•*»^ 
 trated with more or less detail, such narratives are best/ 
 called Allegories ; when moral conduct is inculcated, Parables 
 — that term being retained for little vignette -like stories 
 which present some bit of conduct to be carefully noticed, 
 imitated, or avoided. 
 
 In Plato himself we have examples of deliberate allegorical 
 composition in the Allegory of the "Cave" {Rey. 514 ff.), in 
 that of the "Disorderly Crew" {Rep. 488 A ff.), and in that 
 of the " Birdcage " {Theaet 197 c). The " Choice of Hercules," 
 composed by Prodicus (Xen. Mem. ii. 1. 21 ff.), is another 
 example ; the piece known as "Cebetis Tabula" is another; and 
 the beautiful story of " Cupid and Psyche," told by Apuleius 
 {Met. iv. V. vi.),^ is another. The story of Pandora also, as 
 
 1 Conv. iv. 22. 
 
 "^ Mr. A. Lang, in his Introduction to William Adlington's Translation of 
 the Cupid and Psyche of Apuleius (1566), shows how dependent the maker of an 
 allegorical story often is on Myth, The Allegory of "Cupid and Psyche" is 
 composed on the framework of a Myth which explains a custom— the widely 
 distributed custom according to which the bridegroom must, for some time after 
 marriage, seek the bride secretly in the dark. See also Custom and Myth, 
 pp. 64 ff. Dr. Bigg {Neoplatonism, pp. 128-133) gives a charming epitome of 
 the story, with its interpretation. Referring to Mr. Lang's folk-lore, he says 
 (p. 129), "This artistic composition has very little indeed to do with Hottentots 
 or Zulus. It is really a very elaborate piece of allegory, metaphysics without 
 tears. " I agree with both Mr. Lang and Dr. Bigg. 
 
246 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 given by Hesiod {O.D. 49 if.), has much in it which must be 
 ascribed to deliberate intention. The class of Parables, strictly 
 so called, is represented by many of the Parables of the Old 
 Testament and of the Gospels — by stories like "The Prodigal 
 Son," as distinguished from stories like " The Sower," which 
 are really Allegories. 
 
 There are also narratives with a purpose, which, like The 
 Pilgrim's Progress, are at once Allegories and Parables as dis- 
 tinguished from Allegories. What strikes one most in these 
 narratives originally written to be Allegories or Parables is : How 
 much more eftective they are than old Myths tampered with 
 by rationalism and converted into Allegories. These Allegories 
 originally written to be Allegories, indeed, present doctrine 
 often thinly disguised, but their makers have to exercise 
 creative imagination, not merely scholastic ingenuity. The 
 best of them are true Myths as well as Allegories, and appeal 
 to us, at any rate, by their άνθρω7Γο\ο<γία, if not always by 
 power of calling up Transcendental Feeling — a power which 
 properly belongs to less consciously planned products of genius. 
 Why is The Pilgrim's Progress a Possession for Ever ? Not 
 because it is an ingenious Allegory setting forth doctrine 
 rigorously held by its author; not because it has a good 
 moral tendency, like Plato's tales for children ; but because it 
 is a Myth — an interesting, touching, humorous, mysterious 
 story about people — because its persons, albeit "allegorical," 
 are living men and women, sometimes, like Moliere's or 
 Shakespeare's, active in the dramatic movement of the story, 
 sometimes sketched as they stand, like the people in the 
 Characters of Theophrastus. 
 
 And I slept, and dreamed again, and saw the same two 
 Pilgrims going down the Mountains along the High-way towards 
 the City. Now a little below these Mountains, on the left hand, 
 lieth the Country of Conceit ; from which Country there comes 
 into the way in which the Pilgrims walked, a little crooked Lane. 
 Here, therefore, they met with a very brisk Lad, that came out 
 of that Country. So Christian asked him From what parts he came, 
 and whither he was going ? 
 
 Ignor. Sir, I was born in the Country that lieth off there a 
 little on the left hand, and I am going to the Celestial City. 
 
 Chr. But how do you think to get in at the Gate, for you 
 may find some difficulty there ? 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 247 
 
 Ignor. As other good people do, said he. 
 
 Chr^ But what have you to shew at that Gate, that may 
 iuse that the Gate should be opened to you ? 
 
 Ignor. I know my Lord's will, and I have been a good liver ; 
 I pay every man his own ; I pray, fast, pay tithes, and give alms, 
 and have left my Country for whither I am going. 
 
 Chr. But thou camest not in at the Wicket-Gate that is at 
 the head of this way ; thou camest in hither through that same 
 crooked Lane, and therefore I fear, however thou mayest think of 
 thyself, when the reckoning day shall come, thou wilt hear laid to 
 thy charge that thou art a Thief and a Eobber, instead of getting 
 admittance into the City. 
 
 Ignor. Gentlemen, ye be utter strangers to me, I know you 
 not ; be content to follow the Keligion of your Country, and I 
 will follow the Eeligion of mine. I hope all will be well. And 
 as for the Gate that you talk of, all the world knows that that 
 is a great way off of our Country. I cannot think that any man 
 in all our parts doth so much as know the way to it, nor need 
 they matter whether they do or no, since we have, as you see, a 
 fine pleasant Green Lane, that comes down from our Country the 
 next way into the way. 
 
 When Christian saw that the man was wise in his own Conceit, 
 he said to Hopeful whisperingly, There is more hopes of a fool than 
 of him. And said, moreover, WTien he that is a fool walketh by the 
 way, his wisdom faileth him, and he saith to everyone that he is a fool. 
 What, shall we talk further with him, or outgo him at present 
 and so leave him to think of what he hath heard already, and then 
 stop again for him afterwards, and see if by degrees we can do 
 any good of him ? 
 
 So they both went on, and Ignorance he came after. 
 
 I saw then in my Dream that Hopeful looked back and saw 
 Ignorance, whom they had left behind, coming after. Look, said 
 he to Christian, how far yonder youngster loitereth behind. 
 
 Chr. Ay, ay, I see him ; he careth not for our company. 
 
 Hope. But I tro it would not have hurt him, had he kept 
 pace with us hitherto. 
 
 Chr. That's true, but I warrant you he thinketh otherwise. 
 
 Hope. That I think he doth, but, however, let us tarry for 
 him. So they did. 
 
 Then Christian said to him, Come away man, why do you stay 
 so behind 1 
 
 Ignor. I take my pleasure in walking alone, even more a 
 great deal than in Company, unless I like it the better. 
 
248 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Then said Christian to Hopeful (but softly), Did I not tell you 
 he cared not for our company ? But, however, said he, come up, 
 and let us talk away the time in this solitary place. Then 
 directing his speech to Ignorance, he said, Come, how do you? 
 How stands it between God and your Soul now ? 
 
 Ignor. I hope well ; for I am always full of good motions, 
 that come into my mind to comfort me as I walk. 
 
 Chr. What good motions ? pray tell us. 
 
 Ignor. Why, I think of God and Heaven. 
 
 Chr. So do the Devils and damned Souls. 
 
 Ignor. But I think of them and desire them. 
 
 Chr. So do many that are never like to come there. The 
 Soul of the Sluggard desires, and hath nothing. 
 
 Ignor. But I think of them, and leave all for them. 
 
 Chr. That I doubt, for leaving all is an hard matter — yea, a 
 harder matter than many are aware of. But why, or by what, 
 art thou persuaded that thou hast left all for God and Heaven. 
 
 Ignor. My heart tells me so. 
 
 Chr. The wise man says. He that trusts his own heart is a fool. 
 
 Ignor. This is spoken of an evil heart, but mine is a 
 good one. 
 
 Chr. But how dost thou prove that ? 
 
 Ignor. It comforts me in hopes of Heaven. 
 
 Chr. That may be through its deceitfulness, for a man's 
 heart may minister comfort to him in the hopes of that thing 
 for which he yet has no ground to hope. 
 
 Ignor. But my heart and life agree together, and therefore 
 my hope is well grounded. 
 
 Chr. AVho told thee that thy heart and life agree together ? 
 
 Ignor. My heart tells me so. 
 
 * "k ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 Now while I was gazing upon all these things, I turned my 
 head to look back, and saw Ignorance come up to the Eiver-side ; 
 but he soon got over, and that without half that difficulty which 
 the other two men met with. For it happened that there was 
 then in that place one Fainhope, a Ferry-man, that with his Boat 
 helped him over ; so he, as the other I saw, did ascend the Hill to 
 come up to the Gate, only he came alone ; neither did any man 
 meet him with the least encouragement. AVhen he was come up 
 to the Gate, he looked up to the writing that was above, and then 
 began to knock, supposing that entrance should have been quickly 
 administered to him ; but he was asked by the men that looked 
 over the top of the Gate, Whence came you ? and what would 
 you have ? He answered, I have eat and drank in the presence 
 of the King, and he has taught in our Streets. Then they asked 
 him for his Certificate, that they might go and shew it to the 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 249 
 
 King^ So he fumbled in his bosom for one, and found none. 
 
 Then said they, Have you none ? But the man answered never a 
 word. So they told the King, but he would not come down to 
 see him, but commanded the two Shining Ones that conducted 
 Christian and Hopeful to the City, to go out and take Ignorance^ 
 and bind him hand and foot, and have him away. Then they 
 took him up, and carried him through the air to the door that I 
 saw in the side of the Hill, and put him in there. Then I saw 
 that there was a way to Hell even from the Gates of Heaven, as 
 well as from the City of Destruction. So I awoke, and behold it 
 was a Dream. 
 
 Now the day drew on that Christiana must be gone. So the 
 Koad was full of People to see her take her Journey. But behold 
 all the Banks beyond the Eiver were full of Horses and Chariots, 
 which were come down from aboA^e to accompany her to the City 
 Gate. So she came forth and entered the Eiver, with a beckon 
 of Farewell to those that followed her to the River-side. The 
 last word she was heard to say here was, / come^ Lord, to he with 
 thee and bless thee. 
 
 So her Children and Friends returned to their place, for that 
 those that waited for Christiana had carried her out of their sight. 
 So she went and called, and entered in at the Gate with all the 
 Ceremonies of Joy that her Husband Christian had done before 
 her. 
 
 In process of time there came a Post to the Town again, and 
 his business was with Mr. Ready-to-halt. So he enquired him out, 
 and said to him, I am come to thee in the name of him whom 
 thou hast loved and followed, tho' upon Crutches; and my 
 message is to tell thee that he expects thee at his Table to sup 
 with him in his Kingdom the next day after Easter, wherefore 
 prepare thyself for this Journey. 
 
 Then he also gave him a Token that he was a true Messenger, 
 saying, / have broken thy golden bowl, and loosed thy silver cord. 
 
 After this Mr. Ready-to-halt called for his fellow Pilgrims, and 
 told them, saying, I am sent for, and God shall surely visit you 
 also. So he desired Mr. Valiant to make his Will. And because 
 he had nothing to bequeath to them that should survive him but 
 his Crutches and his good Wishes, therefore thus he said, TL•se 
 Crutches I bequeath to my Son that shall tread in my steps, with a 
 hundred warm wishes that he may prove better than I have done. 
 
 Then he thanked Mr. Great-heart for his Conduct and Kind- 
 ness, and so addressed himself to his Journey. When he came 
 at the Brink of the River.he said. Now I shall have no more need 
 of these Crutches, since yonder are Chariots and Horses for me to ride 
 
250 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 on. The last words he was heard to say was, Welcome Life. So 
 he went his way. 
 
 The test, indeed, of a good Allegory is that it is also 
 a good Myth, or story, for those who do not understand, or 
 care for it, as a vehicle of doctrine. To this test the Parables 
 spoken by Jesus appear to have been consciously accom- 
 modated. He often spoke to the common people in Parables 
 without interpreting them. These Parables were received by 
 the common people as Myths ; afterwards He interpreted 
 them as Allegories to His disciples. Many of His Parables, 
 indeed, as was suggested above, have no interpretation. 
 Stories like the Parables of the Prodigal Son, of the Eich 
 Man who proposed to build barns, of Dives and Lazarus, of 
 the Good Samaritan, are not Allegories to be interpreted — 
 for they have no "other meaning," — but rather little dramas 
 " which reduce to a single incident what is continually 
 occurring in man's experience." ^ 
 
 And even those Parables which are Allegories and admit 
 of detailed doctrinal interpretation, such as the Parable of 
 the Sower, have an intrinsic value apart from the doctrine 
 which they convey — the value of pictures in which common 
 things stand reflected — stand as images, or doubles, for our 
 wonder, in another world, under another sky.^ When one 
 looks at Millet's " Sower," ^ it is easy to put oneself in the 
 place of those who heard Parables gladly without asking for 
 the interpretation of them. 
 
 Let us now look at Plato's two most elaborate " Allegories " 
 - — the " Cave," and the " Disorderly Crew " ; and let us remind 
 ourselves of the features of the former^ by first referring to 
 BepuUic, 532 B, c, where a summary of the whole is given 
 in one sentence : — η he ye, ην δ' εγώ, \ύσι<; re airo των 
 Β€σμών καΙ μeτaστpoή>η άττο των σκιών eirl τα eϊSω\a 
 καϊ το φως καΐ etc του κατα^είου eh τον rfKiov eiravoho^;, 
 καϊ eKel ττρος μεν τα ζωά τ€ καϊ φντα καϊ το του ηΚίου 
 
 ^ Reville, ProUgom^nes de VHist. des Religions (Engl. Transl. by Squire), 
 p. 110. 
 
 2 See Shelley's poem, The Recollection, quoted infra, p. 395, where I attempt 
 to show that a charm like that belonging to leflected images, or doubles, of 
 natural objects — as of trees (or of Narcissus himself) in a pool — enters into the 
 effect produced by the word-pictures of Poetry. 
 
 ^ In the gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 
 
 * Republic. 514 A if. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 251 
 
 ψώ? ert αδυναμία βΧέττβίν, ττρο^ Be τα ev vBaat φαντάσματα 
 e^ta καΐ σκοας των όντων, αλλ* ουκ βίΒώΧων σκίας Bl 
 €T6pov τοιούτου φωτός ως ττρος ηΧίον κρίνβον άττοσκιαζο- 
 μύνας, ττάσα αύτη ή Trpay^aTeia των τβγνών, ας ΒιηΧθομβν, 
 ταύτην e^et την Βύναμιν καϊ Ιττανα^ω^ην του βέλτιστου iv 
 '^^Χν '^ρος την του αρίστου iv τοις ουσι θέαν, ωσττερ 
 τοτ€ του σαφέστατου iv σώματι ττρος την του φανο' 
 τάτου iv τω σωματοβι,Ββΐ τ€ καϊ όρατω τόττω. — There 
 is a Cave in form of a long tunnel which, retaining 
 throughout the dimensions of its entrance, runs down, with 
 a steep decline, into the earth. Some way down, where the 
 daylight at last fails, a great Fire is burning, and beyond the 
 Fire there is a low wall built across the Cave at right angles 
 to its direction. Over the top of this wall showmen hold up 
 and move about little images of men and animals. The 
 shadows of these images are thrown on the rock with which 
 the Cave ends some way beyond.^ Facing this end-rock of the 
 Cave and the shadows thus thrown on it are Prisoners bound 
 so that they cannot turn round. These Prisoners, whose 
 knowledge is confined to shadows of images, represent 
 people who have nothing better than second-hand, hearsay 
 knowledge of " particular facts." But the " Philosopher " 
 comes down from the daylight into the Cave, and unbinds 
 some of them, and " converts " them — turns them round, so 
 that they see the showmen's little images, the " realities " of 
 these shadows. These converted ones represent people who 
 have direct, first-hand knowledge of " facts." Some of these 
 the Philosopher is able to lead up the steep floor of the Cave, 
 past the Fire, which is the Visible Sun, and out into the 
 daylight, which is the light of the Intelligible Sun, the Good, 
 the source of existence and true knowledge. At first the 
 released prisoners are so dazzled by the daylight that they 
 cannot bear to look at the things illuminated by it — men, 
 animals, trees — much less at the Sun itself, but can look only 
 at shadows of men and animals and trees on the ground, or 
 reflections of them in water. These shadows and reflections, 
 
 ^ In the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford there is a Javanese Wayang Kulit, 
 used, in the Historical and Mythological Drama, for the production of shadow- 
 representations. The shadows of puppets (made of leather) are thrown on a 
 screen, the performer manipulatftg the puppets from behind, and working their 
 arms by means of sticks. 
 
252 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 however, differ from the shadows seen on the end-rock of the 
 Cave, in being shadows, not of images of real things, but of 
 real things themselves — they represent the diagrams of 
 geometry, and, generally, the symbols and concepts employed 
 in the deductive sciences to express the principles or laws 
 with which the inquiry is really concerned. In time, the 
 eyes of the released prisoners become accustomed to the 
 daylight, and men, animals, trees, the moon and stars, and, 
 last of all, the Sun, can be looked at. We have now reached 
 the end of all education — the direct apprehension of the IBeac, 
 or Principles, which severally, and as connected system, explain 
 particulars, just as the living man once seen " explains " the 
 showman's image of him. 
 
 I have called the " Cave " an Allegory. It certainly is 
 an Allegory, and is offered as such together with its inter- 
 pretation.^ But when a great poetic genius like Plato builds 
 an Allegory, the edifice, while serving its immediate purpose 
 as an Allegory, transcends that purpose. Plato sees the Cave 
 and makes us see it, and there is much more to be seen there 
 than the mere purpose of the Allegory requires. Perhaps 
 Plato, when he was at Syracuse, saw such a gallery in the 
 stone quarries (there are such galleries still to be seen in the 
 Latomie at Syracuse) lighted up with a fire, and the miners — 
 it may be slaves or convicts in chains — working at the far 
 end with their backs to the fire, while their shadows and the 
 shadows of people and things behind them flitted on the 
 walls. Be this as it may, Plato's Cave is a mysterious place. 
 We enter it wondering, and soon forget, in our wonder, that 
 there is " another meaning." We acquiesce in what we see — 
 the prisoners among the shadows, and the Eedeemer coming 
 down through the dimly-lighted gloom, like Orpheus,^ to lead 
 them up into the daylight. The vision which Plato's 
 
 ^ See Couturat, de Plat. Myth. p. 51, who regards the "Cave" as an 
 Allegory. Schwanitz, die MytJien des Plato, p. 9, on the other hand, calls the 
 "Cave" a myth, and brings it into close comparison with the Prometheus-and- 
 Epimetheus Myth in the Protagoras : — " Wenn in dem vorigen Bilde (the Cave) 
 auf die verschiedene Erkenntniss der Menschen hingewiesen wurde, je nach dem 
 sie der beschrankenden Fesseln mehr oder weniger entledigt waren, so leitet der 
 Mythus von Prometheus und Pandora die Wahrheit ein, dass von Gott Eins in 
 aller Gemiither eingepriigt ist, an Einem alle Theil nehmen, an der sittlichen 
 Scheu und dem Sinn fiir Gerechtigkeit, den gemeinsamen Banden wodurch 
 Staaten zusammengehalten werden." 
 
 2 The book κατάβαση e/s "Αιδου (see Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 373) may have been 
 in Plato's mind. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 253 
 
 " Allegory " calls up is such as his great Myths call up ; it is 
 a vision which fills us with amazement, not a pictorial illus- 
 tration which helps us to understand something.^ Its nearest 
 parallel in literature is that vision which Dante on a sudden 
 calls up before our eyes in Inferno, iv. 46-63 : — 
 
 Dimmi, Maestro mio, dimmi, Signore, 
 
 Commincia' io, per voler esser certo 
 
 Di quella fede che vince ogni errore : 
 Uscicci mai alcuno, ο per suo merto, 
 
 per altrui, che poi fosse beato ? 
 
 Ε quei, che intese 11 mio parlar coperto, 
 Kispose : Io era nuovo in questo stato, 
 
 Quando ci vidi venire un possente 
 
 Con segno di vittoria coronato. 
 Trasseci Γ ombra del primo parente, 
 
 D' Abel sno figlio, e quella di Noe, 
 
 Di Moise legista e ubbidiente ; 
 Abraam patriarcba, e David re, 
 
 Israel con Io padre, e co' suoi nati, 
 
 Ε con Rachele, per cui tanto fe', 
 Ed altri molti ; e fecegli beati : 
 
 Ε vo' che sappi che, dinanzi ad essi, 
 
 Spirit! umani non eran salvati. 
 
 The " Disorderly Crew " is also an Allegory and offered 
 as such ; but, like the " Cave," it has an interest independent 
 of its " other meaning." Without being, like the " Cave," an 
 impressive Myth as well as an Allegory, it is still, apart from 
 its interpretation, a bit of highly interesting ανθρωττοΧοηία. 
 Plato makes the crew of a Greek trading vessel live and move 
 before our eyes. And how like the ancient crew is to the 
 modern one ! Let me place Plato's sketch of the Disorderly 
 Crew and the brilliant description in Eothen of the " politics " 
 of the Greek brigantine caught by a sudden squall side 
 by side : — 
 
 "Imagine," says Socrates, "a shipowner bigger and stronger 
 than all the other men in the ship, but rather deaf, and rather 
 short-sighted, and with a corresponding knowledge of seamanship ; 
 and imagine a crew of sailors all at variance with one another 
 about the steering of the ship, each thinking that he himself 
 ought to steer, although not a man among them has ever learnt 
 the art of steering a ship, or can point to anybody who ever 
 
 ^ This notwithstanding its tlose connection with the "Divided Line," Rep^ 
 609 D if. 
 
254 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 taught him, or can mention a time during which he used to 
 receive instruction : imagine them even asserting that the art 
 cannot be taught at all, and ready to cut down anybody who says 
 that it can, and themselves always mobbing the shipowner, their 
 master, and entreating him, with every argument they can lay 
 hold of, to let them have the tiller; sometimes, if one faction 
 fails to move him, and another is more successful, the unsuccessful 
 killing the successful or casting them out of the ship, and taking 
 the fine old owner, and drugging him, or making him drunk, or 
 perhaps putting him in irons, and then taking themselves the 
 command of the ship, and using the stores, and drinking and 
 feasting, and sailing the ship as such revellers are likely to sail 
 her ; and, to put the finishing touch to our picture, imagine them 
 praising — describing as a 'true seaman,' a 'true pilot,' a 'man 
 thoroughly qualified in navigation' — any one who is great 
 in the art of capturing the owner by argument or force, and 
 securing the command of the ship to themselves ; and imagine 
 these men finding fault with one who cannot do this, and saying 
 that he is 'of no use' — men who have no conception at all of 
 what the true pilot must be — that one must make a study of the 
 seasons, and the sky and the stars, and the winds and all things 
 that belong to navigation, if one is to be really fit to take com- 
 mand of a ship — men, I say, who have no conception whatever 
 of this — men who think that there is no art of how a pilot shall 
 steer whether some people wish him to steer or not — no art of 
 steering as such — to be studied and learnt. With such a state of 
 things as this on board, don't you think that the truly qualified 
 pilot is sure to be called a ' star-gazer,' a ' mere theorist,' and ' of 
 no use to us,' by sailors in a ship so appointed ? " 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said Adeimantus. 
 
 " Then," said I, " I don't think you want to have the simile 
 analysed, in order to understand that it figures a city in its 
 attitude to true Philosophers. You understand that ? " 
 
 " Yes," said he.i 
 
 I sailed (writes Kinglake) ^ from Smyrna in the Amphitrite, 
 a Greek brigantine which was confidently said to be bound for the 
 coast of Syria ; but I knew that this announcement was not to be 
 relied upon with positive certainty, for the Greek mariners are 
 practically free from the stringency of ship's papers, and Avhere 
 they will, there they go. 
 
 * "^ * ^ * * 
 
 ^ ^ * * ^k ^ 
 
 The crew receive no wages, but have all a share in the 
 venture, and in general, I believe, they are the owners of the 
 
 1 Hep. 488 A ff. 2 ^jothen, ch. vi. 
 
THE PROTAGORAS MYTH 255 
 
 whole^fmght ; they choose a captain to whom they entrust just 
 po#er enough to keep the vessel on her course in fine weather, 
 but not quite enough for a gale of wind ; they also elect a cook 
 and a mate. 
 
 We were nearing the isle of Cyprus, when there arose half a 
 gale of wind, with a heavy, chopping sea. My Greek seamen 
 considered that the weather amounted, not to a half, but to an 
 integral gale of wind at the very least ; so they put up the helm, 
 and scudded for twenty hours. \Vhen we neared the mainland of 
 Anadoli, the gale ceased, and a favourable breeze springing up, 
 soon brought us off Cyprus once more. Afterwards the wind 
 changed again, but we were still able to lay our course by sailing 
 close-hauled. 
 
 We were at length in such a position, that by holding on our 
 course for about half an hour, we should get under the lee of the 
 island, and find ourselves in smooth water, but the wind had been 
 gradually freshening ; it now blew hard, and there was a heavy 
 sea running. 
 
 As the grounds for alarm arose, the crew gathered together in 
 one close group; they stood pale and grim under their hooded 
 capotes like monks awaiting a massacre, anxiously looking by 
 turns along the pathway of the storm, and then upon each other, 
 and then upon the eye of the Captain, who stood by the helms- 
 man. Presently the Hydriot came aft, more moody than ever, 
 the bearer of fierce remonstrance against the continuing of the 
 struggle; he received a resolute answer, and still we held our 
 course. Soon there came a heavy sea that caught the bow of the 
 brigantine as she lay jammed in betwixt the waves ; she bowed 
 her head low under the waters, and shuddered through all her 
 timbers, then gallantly stood up again over the striving sea with 
 bowsprit entire. But where were the crew ? It was a crew no 
 longer, but rather a gathering of Greek citizens, — the shout of 
 the seamen was changed for the murmuring of the people — the 
 spirit of the old Demos was alive. The men came aft in a body, 
 and loudly asked that the vessel should be put about, and that 
 the storm be no longer tempted. Now, then, for speeches : — the 
 Captain, his eyes flashing fire, his frame all quivering with emotion, 
 — wielding his every limb, like another and a louder voice, — pours 
 forth the eloquent torrent of his threats, and his reasons, his 
 commands, and his prayers ; he promises — he vows — he swears 
 that there is safety in holding on — safety, if Greeks will he brave I 
 The men hear and are moved, but the gale rouses itself once more, 
 and again the raging sea «omes trampling over the timbers that 
 are the life of all. The fierce Hydriot advances one step nearer 
 
256 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 to the Captain, and the angry growl of the people goes floating 
 down the wind ; but they listen, they waver once more, and once 
 more resolve, then waver again, thus doubtfully hanging between 
 the terrors of the storm and the persuasion of glorious speech, as 
 though it were the Athenian that talked, and Philip of Macedon 
 that thundered on the weather bow. 
 
 Brave thoughts winged on Grecian words gained their natural 
 mastery over terror; the brigantine held on her course, and 
 smooth water was reached at last. 
 
 Let me close these remarks on the relationship between 
 " Myth " and " Allegory " with a reference to " Eitual," in 
 which the characteristics of both seem to be united. A 
 " ritual performance " or " rite " is made up of " symbols." ^ 
 A symbol is a thing, or an act, taken to represent something 
 else. That something else — generally something of great 
 importance — may be a transaction (such as a sale of land, 
 symbolised in the Koman law by the act of transferring a 
 clod of earth), or a belief (such as the doctrine of baptismal 
 regeneration, symbolised by sprinkling with water), or a 
 concept (such as that of justice, symbolised by a figure 
 holding an even balance), or a nation (symbolised by its flag). 
 In most cases the symbol has some analogical resemblance, 
 close or remote, to that which it represents ; in some cases it 
 is a badge which has for some other reason become attached. 
 The habit of symbolic representation is one of the most 
 primitive and persistent tendencies of human nature. It was 
 present in the first efforts of language, and the highest flights 
 of science are still entirely dependent on the development of 
 it ; while without the development of it in another direc- 
 tion there could have been no poetry — the primrose would 
 always have been but the yellow primrose; and even no 
 courtesy of manners — everybody would always have called a 
 spade a spade. 
 
 Now, a ritual performance, or rite, is a composition made 
 up of symbols so put together as to produce solemn feeling in 
 those who celebrate and assist. This effect produced is a 
 massive experience of the whole, and may be, indeed ordi- 
 narily is, received without conscious attention to the signifi- 
 cance of the separate parts — the symbols which together 
 
 1 See Reville, ProUgomhics de VHist. des Religions, p. 125 (Eng. Translation 
 by Squire). 
 
ΎΈΕ PROTAGORAS MYTH 257 
 
 BM-k^^^i^wvhole rite. The rite, if effectually received, is 
 received devoutly as a Myth, not critically apprehended as an 
 Allegory. In its origin and composition it is an Allegory — 
 a mosaic of symbols ; but as time goes on this is largely lost 
 sight of ; the corporate genius of the religious society to which 
 it belongs transforms it for the devout into a Myth. Plato 
 compares that enthusiastic Philosophy, of which Myth is 
 the vehicle, to the Mysteries.^ The devout went to Eleusis, 
 not to get doctrine out of allegorical representations, but to 
 have their souls purified by the awe of the " Blessed Sights " 
 presented in the acted Myth. 
 
 The procession in Furgatorio, xxix., like Ezekiel's visions, 
 to which it is indebted, is an elaborately ordered series of 
 symbolical creatures and objects ; in the fresco on the left 
 wall of the Spanish Chapel of S. Maria Novella in Florence, 
 every figure, either in itself, or in the position which it 
 occupies in the group, is a symbol. It is true, of course, that 
 to appreciate the beauty of either composition fully one must 
 have at least a general acquaintance with the meaning of the 
 symbols employed ; yet finally it is as a great spectacle that 
 the procession of the twenty-ninth Canto of the Pur gator io or 
 the fresco in the Spanish Chapel appeals to one. Indeed, it is 
 because it so appeals that one is anxious to spell out the 
 symbolical meaning of its separate parts, so that, having spelt 
 this patiently out, one may find one's self all the more under 
 the enchantment of the whole which transcends the sum of 
 its parts so wondrously.^ 
 
 Similarly, to take a third instance, it is because the Story, 
 in the Second Book of the Fairy Queen, of the Adventures at 
 the Castle of Medina, is very readable as a story, and contains 
 beautiful passages of poetry, that we ^re pleasurably interested 
 in following its elaborate translation of the dry Aristotelian 
 doctrine of " Mean and Extremes " into pictures. 
 
 I would add that the effect produced by a great 
 professedly allegorical composition like the procession in 
 Furgatorio, xxix., or the Spanish Chapel fresco, is sometimes 
 produced by a poem — sometimes even by a single line or 
 stanza of poetry — in which the poet's art, instead of definitely 
 
 ^ See supra, p. 236. 
 
 2 The symbolism of the fres«o alluded to above is dealt with by Ruskin in 
 his Mornings in Floreiue, iv. and v. 
 
υ 
 
 258 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 presenting, distantly suggests a system of symbols. A symbol 
 or system of symbols definitely presented is often enough a 
 mysterious thing ; but a symbol or system of symbols distantly 
 suggested " teases us out of thought," and arouses in no ordi- 
 nary degree that wonder, at we know not what, which enters 
 into the effect produced by Poetry as such. 
 
 I do not think that a better example of what may be called 
 suppressed symbolism, and of its wonderful poetical effect, could 
 be found than that afforded by Dante's canzone beginning — 
 
 Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute ^ — 
 
 a poem on which Coleridge's record of its effect upon himself 
 is the best commentary. He begins ^ by describing it as " a 
 poem of wild and interesting images, intended as an enigma, 
 and to me an enigma it remains, spite of all my efforts." 
 Then, in an entry dated Eamsgate, Sept. 2, 1819, he writes: 
 " I hegin to understand the above poem (Tre donne intorno al 
 cuor mi son venute, etc.), after an interval from 1805, during 
 which no year passed in which I did not re-peruse, I might 
 say, construe, parse, and spell it, twelve times at least — such 
 a fascination had it, spite of its obscurity ! It affords a good 
 instance, by the bye, of that soul of universal significance in a 
 true poet's composition, in addition to the specific meaning." 
 
 * Canzone xx. p. 170, Oxford Dante. 
 
 '^ Anima Poetae, from the unpublished notebooks of S. T. Coleridge, edited 
 by E. H. Coleridge, 1895, p. 293. 
 
THE TIMAEUS 
 
 Context 
 
 The subject of the Timaeus is the Creation of the Universe 
 {soul and hody) and of Man (soul and body). The speaker in 
 whose mouth the whole Discourse, or Myth, treating of this 
 subject is put is Timaeus, the great Pythagorean Philosopher of 
 Locri in Italy. 
 
 The Discourse, or Myth, is part of the general scheme which 
 is worked out in the Trilogy consisting of the Eepublic, Timaeus, 
 and Critias. 
 
 The assumed chronological order of the pieces is Kepublic, 
 Timaeus, Critias : i.e. the Conversation at the house of Cephalus 
 is repeated next day by Socrates to Timaeus, Critias, Hermocrates, 
 and another — this is the Eepublic; the day after that again, 
 Socrates, Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates meet, and the Con- 
 versation and Discourse which constitute the Timaeus are held, 
 followed by the Myth related by Critias in the unfinished piece 
 which bears his name. Thus we have first an account of Mans 
 education ; then an account of his creation ; and lastly the story 
 of the Great War for which his education fits him. 
 
 But, of course, the logical order is Timaeus, Eepublic, 
 Critias : — God, because he is good, makes, in his own image, 
 the Universe of which Man is part — not, however, a mere part, 
 but a part which, after a fashion, is equivalent to the whole, in 
 so far as it adequately represents the vjhole — a microcosm in 
 the macrocosm. Man, as microcosm, is an image of God as 
 adequate as the great Cosmos itself is; and, like God whose 
 image he is, is a creator — makes in turn a Cosmos, the State. 
 We have thus the analogy : — God : Cosmos : : Man : State. 
 Upon God's creation of the Cosmos, in the Timaeus, there 
 follows, in order, Man's creation of the State, in the Eepublic ; 
 while the Critias comes last ivith the representation of the State 
 performing the work for which it was created. 
 
 259 
 
260 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Timaeus 29 D-92 c 
 
 29 D Αά'γωμεν Βή, Βί rjvrcva αΐτίαν ^eveaiv καΐ το τταν roBe 
 
 Ε ό ξννιστας ξννβστησβν. ά'γαθος ην, αηαθω δέ ούδεί? ττβρί 
 
 ονΒβνος ovBeTTore iyylyveraL φθόνος' τούτου δ' €λ:το9 ων 
 
 ττάντα 6 τι μάΧίστα η^ν€.σθαί ββουΚηθη τταραττΧησια ίαυτω. 
 
 30 βουΧηθβΙς yap 6 θβος ayaOa μβν ττάντα, ψλανρον Be 
 μηΒβν elvai κατά Βνναμιν, ούτω Βη τταν, όσον ην όρατόν, 
 τταραΧαβων ουχ ησυγίαν ayov, άλλα κίνονμβνον '7ΓΧημμ€Χως 
 καΐ ατάκτως, βίς τάξιν αντο rjyayev €Κ της αταξίας, 
 ηyησάμevoς €Κ€Ϊνο τούτον ττάντως άμβινον, θέμις Be οΰτ 
 ην οΰτ €στί τω άρίστω Βραν αΧΧο ττΧην το κάΧΧιστον. 
 
 Β XoyL•σάμ€voς ουν βνρισκβν €Κ των κατά φύσιν ορατών ovBev 
 άνόητον τον νονν 6'χοντος οΧον οΧου κάΧΧιον βσβσθαί ττοτβ 
 epyov, νουν Β αν χωρίς ψν^ής άΒύνατον 7Γapay€veσθaι τω. 
 Βίά Βη τον Xoyiapx>v TovBe νονν μ€ν iv ψν'χτ}, •ψνχην Be ev 
 σώματι ξννιστάς το τταν ξvveτeκτaίveτo, οττως ο τι κάΧΧιστον 
 €Ϊη κατά φύσιν άριστον τ€ epyov ά7Γeιpyaσμevoς. όντως ονν 
 Βη κατά Xoyov τον €ΐκ6τα Bei Xeyeiv TOvBe τον κόσμον 
 ζώον βμψνχον evvovv τ€ τη άΧηθ€ία Βιά την τον θeov 
 
 C yeveσθaι ττρόνοιαν. Τούτου δ* ύττάρχοντος αν τά τούτοις 
 €φ€ξής ήμϊν XeKTeov, τίνι των ζώων αντον eh ομοιότητα 6 
 ξννιστάς ξvveστησe, των μίν ονν ev μέρονς etBei ^Γeφvκό- 
 των μηΒ€νι κaτaξιώσωμev ' aTeXei yap €θΐκος ovBev ττοτ 
 αν yevoiTo καΧον ον Β €στι τάΧΧα ζώα καθ^ ev καΧ κατά 
 yevη μόρια, τούτω -πάντων όμοιότατον αντον elvai τιθώμev. 
 τά yap Βη νοητά ζώα ττάντα eKelvo ev €αντώ ττepΐXaβov 
 e^ei, Kaeairep oBe 6 κόσμος ημάς οσα Τ6 αΧΧα θρέμματα 
 
 D ξvveστηκev ορατά. τω yap τών νοονμένων καΧΧίστω και 
 
THE TIMAEUS 261 
 
 Translation 
 
 Let the cause of the creation of this Universe be declared, 
 to wit, that the Maker thereof was Good ; with the Good there 
 is no grudging of aught at any time : wherefore, being altogether 
 without grudging, God wished all things to be made as like 
 unto Himself as might be. 
 
 Now God, wishing that all things should be good so far 
 as might be, and nothing evil, having received all that was 
 Visible into His hands, and perceiving that it was not at rest 
 but moved without measure and without order, took and 
 brought it out of that disorder into order, thinking that this 
 state was altogether better than that. For He Who is Best 
 might not then — nor may He now — do aught save that which 
 is most excellent. Wherefore He took thought and found out 
 that, amongst those things which are by nature Visible, no 
 work which is without Keason would ever, in the comparison, 
 be fairer than that which hath Keason ; and again, that 
 Keason could not, without Soul, come and abide with any- 
 thing. For this cause He put Keason in the Soul, and Soul 
 in Body, when he fashioned the Universe ; to the end that the 
 creature of his workmanship might be the fairest by nature 
 and the most excellent. 
 
 Our discourse, then, following alway the way of likelihood, 
 hath brought us thus far — that this Universe is a Living 
 Creature, which hath in truth gotten Soul and Keason through 
 the Providence of God. 
 
 Next must we tell in the likeness of what Living Creature 
 the Maker made it. Unto none of those creatures which are 
 by nature Parts of the Whole let us compare it ; for naught 
 fair could ever come forth in the likeness of that which is 
 imperfect ; but unto That whereof the living creatures, severally 
 and according to their kinds, are parts must we deem it most 
 like. Now That containeth in itself all Intelligible Creatures, 
 even as this Universe cointaineth us and all his other nurslings 
 which were created to be Visible : for unto That which is the 
 
262 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Kara iravra τβλβω μάλιστα αυτόν 6 θβος ομοίωσαν βουλή- 
 θβΐς ζώον €V ορατόν, ττάνθ^ οσα αυτοΰ κατά φύσιν ξυ'^^^νη 
 
 31 ζωα €ντος e^ov ίαυτοΰ, ξυνέστησβ. Πότβρον ουν ορθώς eva 
 ούρανον 7Γροσ€ΐρήκαμ€ν, ή ττολλούς καΐ απείρους λβ^ζΐν ην 
 6ρθ6τ€ρον ; €va, elirep κατά το τταρά^α^μα ΒεΒημιουρ^ημάνος 
 €σται. το yap ττερύχ^ον ττάντα οττόσα νοητά ζωα, μεθ^ 
 €Τ6ρου δεύτερον ουκ αν ττοτ €Ϊη* τταλι,ν yap αν βτερον elvai 
 το 7Γ€ρ\ έκείνω Beoi ζώον, ου μέρος αν εϊτην έκείνω, καΐ 
 ουκ αν €τι εκείνοιν, αλλ' εκείνω τω ττερίβγοντι, τοΚ αν 
 άφωμοιωμβνον λeyo^,τo ορθοτβρον. ϊνα ουν τόΒβ κατά την 
 
 Β μόνωσίν ομοιον η τω τταντελεΐ ζωω, Βιά ταύτα οΰτε Βυο 
 οΰτ άττείρους εττοίησεν 6 ττοιών κόσμους, αλλ' εις οΒε 
 
 μovoyεvης ουρανός yεyovώς εστί τε καΐ ετ εσται. 
 
 ****** 
 
 82 Β fcal Βιά ταύτα εκ τε Βη τούτων καΐ τοιούτων και τον 
 
 C αριθμόν τεττάρων το του κόσμου σώμα εyεvvηθη Βι 
 
 άvdλoyiaς όμoλoyησav, φιλίαν τε εσχ^εν εκ τούτων, ώστ 
 
 εις ταύτον αύτω ξυνελθον αλυτον ύττό του άλλου πλην ύττο 
 
 του ξυνΒησαντος yεvεσθaι, Ύών Βε Βη τεττάρων εν όλον 
 
 εκαστον εϊληφεν ή του κόσμου ξύστασις' εκ yap ττυρος 
 
 τταντος ΰΒατός τε και άερος και yής ξυνεστησεν αύτον ό 
 
 ξυνιστάς, μέρος ούΒεν ούΒενος ούΒε Βύναμιν έξωθεν ύττολι- 
 
 D ττών, τάΒε Βιανοηθείς, ττρώτον μεν ϊνα όλον 6 τι μάλιστα 
 
 33 ζώον τελεον εκ τελεων τών μερών εϊη, ττρος Βε τούτοις εν, 
 
 άτε ουχ υττόλελειμμενων εξ ων άλλο τοιούτο yivoir αν, 
 
 ετι Βε ινα ώγήρων καΐ άνοσον η, κατανοών, ώς ξυνιστάμενά 
 
 τω ^ σώματι θερμά και ψυχ^ρά και ττάνθ , οσα Βυνάμεις 
 
 ^ For ξυνιστάμΐνά τφ read ξυστατφ. 
 
THE TIMAEUS 263 
 
 fairest of Things Intelligible and altogether perfect did God 
 wish to liken it ; wherefore made He it a Living Creature, 
 One, Visible, having in itself all the Living Creatures which 
 are by nature kin unto it. 
 
 Have we rightly called the Heaven One ? Or were it 
 more right to say that there are Heavens many — nay, infinite 
 in number ? 
 
 One Visible Heaven there must be, if it is to be fashioned 
 according to the pattern of That which, inasmuch as it con- 
 taineth all Intelligible Creatures which are, could never be a 
 second with another ; for if it were a second with another, 
 then must there be another Creature including these two, 
 whereof they would be parts ; and it would no longer be right 
 to say that this Visible Universe was made after their likeness, 
 but rather after the likeness of That which included them. 
 Wherefore that this Universe might be One only, like unto 
 the One only, All-perfect, Living Creature, the Maker made 
 neither two Universes nor Universes infinite in number, but 
 this One Only Begotten Heaven which was made, and is, and 
 ever shall be. 
 
 For this cause, and out of these elements, being of such 
 sort and four in number, was the Body of the Universe 
 brought forth at one with itself through the proportional dis- 
 position of elements. Whence also it got Love, so that it 
 was knit together with bonds which cannot be loosed, save by 
 Him Who did bind. 
 
 Now, the making of the Universe took up the whole of 
 each of the four elements: for the Maker of the Universe 
 made it of all the fire that was, and all the water, and all the 
 air, and all the earth, and left not any part or virtue of any 
 of these without ; to the end, first, that it might be a Living 
 Creature, Whole, so far as might be, and Perfect, with the parts 
 thereof perfect; and secondly, that it might be One Only, 
 since naught was left over of which another like unto this 
 could be made; and thirdly, that it might be without old 
 age or disease; for He knew that if things hot and cold, 
 and all such as have strong powers, encompass the composite 
 
264 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 υσγυρα<ζ €^et, ττβρΰστάμβνα βξωθβν, και ΤΓροσττίτΓΤοντα 
 άκαίρω<;, Xvec καί νόσους yrjpaf; re eirayovra φθίνβιν ττοιβΐ. 
 
 * * % * * * 
 
 33 Β Έ,χτιμα δε βΒωκβν αύτω το ττρβττον καί το ξυγγ€ν€<ζ. 
 τω Se τα ττάντ iv αύτω ζώα Treptey^eiv μεΧΧοντι ζώω 
 ττρβττον αν €Ϊη σχ^ημα το ττβρίβίΧηφος iv αντω ττάντα, 
 οττοσα σχήματα. 8ώ καΐ σφαίρο€ΐΒ€<ζ, €κ μέσου ττάνττ] 
 ττρος τας τβΧβυταζ ϊσον άττάχ^ον, κυκΧοτβρβς αύτο βτορνβύ- 
 σατο, ττάντων τέλβώτατον όμοίότατόν Τ€ αύτο βαυτω 
 σχ^ημάτων, νομίσα<ζ μνρίω κάΧΚιον ομοίον ανόμοιου. Αβΐον 
 Be Βη κύκΧω τταν βξωθβν αύτο άττηκριβούτο, ττοΧλών χάριν. 
 
 C ομμάτων Τ€ yap βττβΒβΐτο ούΒεν, ορατον yap ούΒβν ύττβλεί- 
 ττ€Τ0 βξωθεν ούΒ' άκοή<ζ, ούΒβ yap άκουστόν ττνβύμά re 
 ούκ ην ττβρίβστος Ββόμβνον άναττνοής. ούΒ^ αύ τίνος eVtSee? 
 ην 6pyάvoυ σγβΐν, ω την μβν eZ? ίαυτο τροφην Βεξοίτο, την 
 Be ττρότβρον βξίκμασμίνην άττοττεμψοί ττάΧιν aTTrjet re yap 
 ovBev ούΒε ττροσ^ειν αύτω ττοθέν ούΒβ yap ην. αύτο yap 
 βαυτω τροφην την βαυτού φθίσιν τταρέχον καϊ ττάντα iv 
 
 D βαυτω και ύφ^ βαυτού ττάσγον καϊ Βρών iK τβχνης yeyovev 
 ηyησaτo yap αύτο ό ξυνθβΙ<ζ ανταρκβς ον αμβινον βσβσθαι 
 μαΧΚον η ττροσΒββς άΧλων. γειρών Be, ah οΰτβ Χαββΐν 
 οΰτβ αύ TLva άμύνασθαι χρβία τις ην, μάτην ούκ ωβτο Ββΐν 
 αύτω ττροσάτττβίν, ούΒ6 ττοΒών ούΒβ ολω? της ττβρί την 
 34 βάσιν ύττηρβσίας. κίνησιν yap άττβνβιμβν αύτω την του 
 σώματος οίκβίαν, των βτττά την ττβρϊ νουν και φρόνησιν 
 μάλιστα ούσαν. Βιο Βη κατά ταύτα iv τω αύτω καϊ iv 
 βαυτω TTepiayayiov αύτο iττoίησe κύκΧω κινβΐσθαι στρβφο- 
 μβνον, τας Ββ βξ άττάσας κινήσεις άφβΐΧε καϊ άττΧανβς 
 άττ6ιpyάσaτo iκeίvωv. iTTi Be την ττβριοΒον ταύτην άτ 
 ούΒβν ΤΓοΒών Beov άσκβΧβς καϊ άττουν αύτο iyevvησev. 
 
 Οΰτος Βη ττας οντος άβϊ Xoyισμoς θεού ττβρϊ τον ττοτβ 
 
THE TIMAEUS 265 
 
 body from without, and strike against it unseasonably, they 
 dissolve it and bring disease and old age upon it, and so 
 cause it to decay. 
 
 That shape likewise gave He unto it which is fit and 
 proper. Inasmuch, then, as that shape which comprehendeth 
 in itself all the shapes is fit for the Living Creature which 
 should contain in itself all Living Creatures, for this cause did 
 He turn it to be like a ball, round, with boundary at every 
 point equally distant from centre. Thus gave He unto it that 
 which of all shapes is the most perfect, and most like unto 
 itself, deeming that which is like unto itself fairer by far than 
 that which is unlike. Moreover, without He made it perfectly 
 smooth all round, for reasons many : — eyes it needed not, 
 because nothing visible was left remaining without ; nor ears, 
 because there was nothing without audible ; nor was there air 
 round about it that it should breathe ; nor did it need to have 
 any organ for the taking in of food, or for the putting out of 
 that wherefrom the juices were already expressed ; for nothing 
 went forth, and nothing came unto it from anywhere ; for 
 without there was nothing. Yea, it was fashioned cunningly 
 that it should afford nourishment unto itself, through the 
 wasting of itself, and should receive and do all within itself 
 and through itself; for He Who made it thought that if it 
 were sufficient unto itself, it would be better than if it had 
 need of other things added unto it. Wherefore, inasmuch as 
 it needeth not hands for taking hold of aught or withstanding 
 any adversary. He deemed it not meet to give unto it hands to 
 no purpose, nor feet, nor any instrument of walking ; for the 
 motion that He allotted unto it was the motion proper unto 
 such a body, to wit, that one of the Seven Motions which 
 appertaineth most unto Eeason and Understanding. Where- 
 fore He turned it round and round, with the same quickness, in 
 the same place, about itself ; but the other motions, all save 
 circular motion. He took away from it, and stablished it with- 
 out their wanderings. Inasmuch, then, as for this revolution 
 there was no need of feet. He created it without legs and 
 feet. 
 
 Thus did God, Who is alway, reason with Himself concern- 
 
266 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Β €σομ€νον Oeov Xoyiadel'; Χβΐον καί ομαΧον ττανταγΎ) re €Κ 
 μβσον ϊσον καΐ 6\ον καί reXeov €Κ τέλέων σωμάτων σώμα 
 €7Γθίησ€. ψνχ^ην δε eh το μέσον αύτον θείς Sia 'ίταντος Τ€ 
 €T€LV€ καΐ €Τί βξωθεν το σώμα αύττ) 7Γ€ρί€/€αΚνψ€ τανττ), 
 καΐ κύκ\ω Βη κνκΚον στρεφόμβνον ονρανον €va μόνον ερημον 
 κατέστησε, Βν άρετην Βε αύτον αύτω Βυνάμενον ζν^^ί- 
 ^νεσθαι καΐ ούΒενο^ί έτερου ττροσΒεομενον, ^νώριμον Βε κα\ 
 φίΧον Ικανώς αύτον αύτω. Bca ττάντα Βη ταύτα εύΒαίμονα 
 θεον αύτον ε'γεννησατο, Ύην Βε Βη yjrv^rjv ουχ ώ? νυν 
 C ύστέραν ετηγειρουμεν \ε<γει,ν, όντως εμη'χανησατο καΐ 6 θεός 
 νεωτεραν ού yap αν άρ'χεσθαι ττρεσβντερον ύττο νεωτέρου 
 ξυνερξας εϊασεν 
 
 ****** 
 ψυχ^ην σώματος, ώς Βεσττότιν καϊ άρξουσαν άρξομενον, 
 36 ξυνεστησατο εκ τώνΒε τε καϊ τοιωΒε τρόττω. της αμέριστου 
 καϊ άεΐ κατά ταύτα ε-χούσης ουσίας καϊ της αΰ ττερί τα 
 σώματα ^υ^νομενης μεριστης τρίτον εξ άμφοΐν εν μέσω 
 ξυνεκεράσατο ουσίας εΙΒος, της τε ταύτού φύσεως αύ ττερο ^ 
 καϊ της θατερου. 
 
 ****** 
 καϊ τρία Χαβών αύτα οντά συνεκεράσατο εΙς μίαν ττάντα 
 ΙΒεαν, την θατερου φύσιν Βύσμικτον ονσαν εΙς ταύτον 
 Β ξυναρμοττων βία. μι^νύς Βε μετά της ουσίας καϊ εκ τριών 
 ΤΓΟίησάμενος εν ττάΧιν οΧον τούτο μοίρας όσας ττροσήκε 
 Βιενει,μεν, εκάστην Βε εκ τε ταύτού καϊ θατερου καϊ της 
 ουσίας μεμυ^μενην. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 ^ at ττέρι om. 
 
THE TIMAEUS 267 
 
 ing the god who should be, and made him to be smooth, and 
 even, with boundary at every point at equal distance from 
 the centre — a Body whole and perfect, composite of bodies 
 perfect. 
 
 And in the midst thereof He put Soul, and spread it 
 throughout the whole, and also wrapped the Body round 
 about on the outside therewith ; and made the Universe a 
 revolving sphere, one only, and solitary, but, by reason of the 
 virtue which belonged unto it, able to consort with itself, 
 having need of no other, being itself acquaintance and friend 
 unto itself in full measure. A god, then, in regard of all 
 these things blessed, begat He it. 
 
 But, albeit Soul cometh second in our discourse, yet was 
 she not created by God younger than Body ; for of these twain 
 which He joined together He would not have suffered the elder 
 to be governed by the younger. 
 
 The mistress and ruler of the Body did God fashion Soul, 
 out of these elements, after this manner : betwixt that Sub- 
 stance which is undivided and alway the same, and that which 
 cometh into being and is divided in bodies. He made, by the 
 mixing of them both, a third sort of Substance in the middle 
 betwixt the Same and the Other. 
 
 **•«-•«■* -/^ 
 
 These Substances, being three, He took and mixed all 
 together, so that they became one Form; and the Nature of 
 the Other, which was hard to mix, He joined by force unto 
 the Same, and these He mingled with the Third Substance ; 
 and of the three made one : then again divided this whole 
 mass into as many parts as was meet, whereof each one was 
 compounded of the Same and the Other and the Third 
 Substance.^ 
 
 [35 B-36 D. — These parts, all standing in specified 
 numerical ratios to one another, are cut off in specified order, 
 until the whole soul-mass is used up. They are pieced 
 together in the order in which they are cut off, and make a 
 soul-strip, as it were, which is then divided lengthwise into 
 two equal bands, which are laid across each other like the 
 
 1 "The Third Substance '* is "the Unity of Apperception "—"Self -Con- 
 sciousneas." 
 
268 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 36 D ΈτΓβΙ δε κατά νουν τω ξυνιστάνη ττασα η τη<; ψυχη'ζ 
 
 Ε ξύστασυ^ 6γ6γ6ΐ/7;το, μ^τα τούτο ήταν το σωματο€ί8€<ζ ivTo<i 
 αύτης έτεκταίνβτο καΐ μέσον μεστ) ξυνα^α^ων ττροσηρμοττβν. 
 ή δ' €κ μέσου ττρο? τον βσγ^ατον ούρανον ττάνττ} δ^αττλα- 
 κείσα κύκΧω τβ αύτον βξωθβν ττζρικαΧίη^ασα αύτη iv αύττ) 
 στρεφόμενη θείαν άρχ^ην ηρξατο άτταύστον καν εμφρονος 
 βίου 7Γ/309 τον ξύμτταντα γ^ρόνον. καΐ το μεν 8η σώμα 
 ορατον ουρανού <γέ<γονεν, αύτη Βε αόρατος μεν, Χο^γισμού δε 
 
 37 μετέγουσα καΐ αρμονίας ψυχ^η των νοητών αεί τε όντων, 
 ύτΓΟ τού αρίστου αρίστη <γενομενη τών yεvvηθεvτωv. ατε 
 ούν εκ της ταύτού και της θατέρου φύσεως εκ τε ούσιας 
 τριών τούτων συ^κραθείσα μοιρών^ καΐ άνα \oyov μερισθεΐσα 
 καϊ ξυνΒεθεΐσα, αύτη τε άνακυκΧουμενη ττρος αύτην, όταν 
 ούσίαν σκεΒαστην ε'χοντός τίνος εφάτττηταν καϊ όταν 
 άμερνστον, Χέ^ει κινούμενη Βια ττάσης εαυτής, οτω τ αν τι 
 ταύτον η καϊ ότου αν έτερον. 
 
THE TIMAEUS 269 
 
 two strokes of the letter X, the point at which they cross 
 being the middle of each. Each of these crossed bands is 
 then bent (say, up) into a hoop, so that its ends and the ends 
 of the other band meet at the point, in the two circumfer- 
 ences thus formed, which is opposite that at which the bands 
 cross each other. "Thus," as Mr. Archer-Hind says,^ "we 
 have two circles bisecting each other, and, as the shape of X 
 implies, inclined at an acute angle." One of these hoops, 
 called the outer, is the Circle of the Same, the inner is the 
 Circle of the Other. The former revolves from left to right 
 (from east to west), the latter from right to left. The Circle 
 of the Same remains one and undivided, but the Circle of the 
 Other is subdivided into seven concentric circles — those of the 
 seven planets — each with its own proper motion.^] 
 
 Now, when the making of the Soul had been fully accom- 
 plished according to the good pleasure of her Maker, then did 
 He fashion within her all that is corporeal, and draw these two, 
 Soul and Corporeal Body, together, and join them middle to 
 middle, and the Soul was inwoven everywhere from the 
 middle of the Heaven even unto the borders thereof, and 
 spread round the Heaven without, for a covering, and, turning 
 round within herself, made beginning of her divine life of 
 Keason, which continueth without end for evermore. 
 
 The Body of the Heaven was created visible ; but she, to 
 wit, the Soul, invisible, and a partaker of Eeason and Harmony ; 
 being the most excellent of the things created, for that she 
 was created by Him Who of Beings Intelligible and Eternal 
 is the most excellent. 
 
 Inasmuch, then, as she was compounded of the Same and 
 of the Other and of Substance, these three, and was divided 
 and bound together according to due proportions, and alway 
 returneth unto herself, when she toucheth anything whose 
 substance is scattered, or aught whose substance is undivided, 
 she is moved throughout all her nature, and declareth where- 
 with that thing is the same, and wherefrom it is different. 
 
 1 TimaeiLS, note on 36 c, p. 111. 
 
 ^ See de An. i. 406 b 25-407 b 13, where Aristotle summarises this account 
 of the formation of the Soul, and criticises it in a manner which shows that he 
 entirely misapprehends the Timaeus — fails to see that its "doctrines" are con- 
 veyed δια μυθολο'/ίαί, not δια δι^αχη$. In a Myth it is allowable to speak of the 
 Soul as μέΎ€θο$. 
 
270 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 C Ώ? Be κινηθβν αύτο καΐ ζών βνόησβ των άϊΒίων θεών 
 
 yeyovo^ α^αΚμα 6 ^6ννησα<ζ ττατηρ, η^άσθη re και βύφραν- 
 θβΐς €Τί Βη μάΧλον ομοίον ττρο^ το τταράδβίγ/χα €7Γ€ν6ησ€ν 
 
 D άτΓβρ^άσασθαί» καθάττβρ οΰν αύτο Tvy^avei ζωον άΐΒων 
 oV, καΐ ToBe το ττάν οΰτω^ βίς Βνναμιν εττεχε^τ^σε τοιούτον 
 airoTeXelv. η μεν ονν του ζώου ψύσι<; βτύγχ^ανεν ούσα 
 αιώνιος. καΐ τούτο μβν Βη τω <γ€ννητω τταντέλώς ττροσά- 
 ΤΓτειν ουκ ην Βυνατόν €ΐκώ δ* eirevoei κινητόν τίνα αιώνος 
 TTOirjaait και Βιακοσμών αμα ούρανον iroiei μένοντος αιώνος 
 iv €vl κατ αριθμόν Ιούσαν αΐώνιον εικόνα, τούτον ον Βη 
 γ^ρονον ώνομάκαμεν. ημέρας yap καΐ νύκτας και μήνας καϊ 
 
 Ε ενιαντούς, ούκ οντάς ττρίν ούρανον yeviaOai, τότε άμα 
 εκείνω ξυνισταμένίο την yέvεσιv αυτών μη'χαναται. 
 
 38 Β Ι^ρονος Β ούν μετ ουρανού yέyovεv, ϊνα αμα yεvvηθέvτες 
 
 άμα και Χυθώσιν, αν ττοτε Χύσις τις αυτών yίyvητaι, και 
 κατά το 7ΓapάBειyμa της Βίαιων ίας φύσεως, Χν ώς όμοιό- 
 C τατος αύτω κατά Βύναμιν rj' το μεν yap Βη 7ΓapάBεLyμa 
 ττάντα αιώνα εστίν 6ν, ο δ* αύ Βια τεΚους τον άτταντα 
 γ^ρονον yεyovώς τε καϊ ων καϊ εσόμενος. εξ ούν \όyoυ και 
 Βιανοιας θεού τοιαύτης ττρος "χρόνου γ^ϊ'^^^ϊ^» "^^^ yεvvηθfj 
 'χρόνος, ήλιος καϊ σεΧηνη και ττεντε άΧλα άστρα, εττίκΧην 
 έχοντα ττΧανηταί, εις Βιορισμον και φυΧακην αριθμών 
 χρόνου yeyovε. σώματα Βε αυτών εκάστων ττοιησας ό θεός 
 εθηκεν εΙς τάς ττεριφοράς, ας ή θατέρου ττερίοΒος γειν, ετττά 
 ούσας οντά ετττά. 
 
 39 Ε Καί- τα μεν αΧλα ηΒη μέχρι χρόνου yεvεσεως άττείρ- 
 
 yaστo εις ομοιότητα ωττερ άττεικάζετο, τω Βε μηττω τα 
 Ίταντα ζώα εντός αυτού yεyεvημέva ττεριειΧηφεναι, ταύττ} 
 ετι ειχεν άνομοίως. τούτο Βη το κατάΧοιττον ά'πειpyάζετo 
 αυτού ττρος την τού 7ΓapaBείyμaτoς άττοτυττού μένος φύσιν. 
 τίττερ ούν νους ενούσας ΙΒεας τω ο εστί ζώον, οίαί τε ενεισι 
 
THE TIMAEUS 271 
 
 Now, when the Father Who begat this created image of 
 the eternal gods saw that it moved and lived, He was glad ; 
 and, being well pleased, took thought to make it even more 
 like unto the pattern thereof. Inasmuch, then, as that 
 pattern is an Eternal Being, even such, so far as might be, did 
 He seek to make this Universe likewise. Now, the nature of 
 the Being which is the pattern thereof is eternal. And this 
 nature could not be joined in any wise unto the created thing : 
 wherefore He took thought to make a Moving Image of 
 Eternity ; and whilst He was ordering the Heaven, He made of 
 Eternity which abideth in Unity an Image Eternal progressing 
 according to Number, to wit, that which we have called by the 
 name of Time. For days and nights and months and years, 
 which were not before the Heaven was created. He fashioned 
 and brought forth together with the Heaven when He framed it. 
 
 * . * * -«• * ♦ 
 
 Time was created together with the Heaven, so that, having 
 been created together, together they might be dissolved, if 
 dissolution should ever befall them : and after the pattern of 
 the Eternal Nature was it created, that it might be as like 
 thereto as possible ; for the pattern is existent throughout all 
 Eternity, and the Image thereof was made, and is, and shall 
 be continually, throughout all Time. Wherefore, according to 
 this counsel of God for the creation of Time, the sun and the 
 moon and the other five stars, which are surnamed planets, 
 were created for the dividing and safeguarding of the numbers 
 of Time. And God, when He had made the bodies of each of 
 these, set them in the orbs wherein the circuit of the Other 
 was moving, seven stars in seven orbs. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Now, until Time was brought forth, all else had been 
 fashioned in the likeness of That whereunto it was made like ; 
 but inasmuch as all the kinds of living creatures, which the 
 Universe should comprehend within itself, were not yet created, 
 therein was it still unlike. 
 
 This part, therefore, of the Universe which remained un- 
 finished He now finished, moulding it to the nature of the 
 pattern. All the Forms which Keason perceiveth to be present 
 in the Intelligible Livtng Creature, these, after their kinds. 
 
272 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 καΐ oaaL, καθορα, τοιαύτας καΐ τοσαύτα^ Βιενοήθη Becv καν 
 ToBe ο•χ€Ϊν» €ΐσΙ Βη τ€Ττα/3€9, μία μεν ουράνίον θβών 
 
 40 ycvo^y αΧΧη Be πττηνον καΐ aepoiropov, τρίτη Be evvBpov 
 βΖδος, τΓβζον Be και γερσαΐον τέταρτον, του μεν ονν θείου 
 την ττΧείστην ΙΒεαν εκ ττυρος άττήρξατο, οττως ο τί Χαμττρο- 
 τατον ΙΒεΐν τε κάΧΚιστον εΐη, τω Βε τταντί ττροσευκάζων 
 εΰκυκΧον εττοίεί, τίθησί τε εις την του κρατίστου φρόνησαν 
 εκείνφ ξυνε'ττόμενον, νείμαζ ττερί ττάντα κύκΧω τον ούρανον, 
 κόσμον άΧηθινον αύτω ττεττοίΚίΧμενον elvai καθ^ οΧον. 
 Κινήσεις Βε Βύο 'ττροσήψεν εκάστω, την μεν εν ταύτω κατά 
 
 Β ταύτα ττερϊ των αυτών άεΐ τα αύτα εαυτω Βιανοουμενω, την 
 Βε eh το ττρόσθεν υττο της ταύτοΰ καΐ ομοίου ττεριψοράς 
 κρατουμενω' τας Βε ττεντε κινήσεις άκίνητον και εστός, Ίν 
 ο τι μαΧιστα αυτών εκαστον γένοιτο ώς άριστον. εξ ης 
 Βη της αίτιας 'γε'γονεν οσ άττΧανή τών άστρων ζώα θεια 
 οντά καΐ ά'ί'Βια και κατά ταύτα εν ταύτω στρεφόμενα άει 
 μένει• τα Βε τρεττόμενα και ττΧάνην τοιαύτην ϊσ'χοντα, 
 καθάττερ εν τοις ττρόσθεν ερρηθη, κατ εκείνα yεyovε. jrjv 
 Bit τροφον μεν ημετεραν, είΧΧομενην Βε ττερϊ τον Βιά τταντός 
 
 C ττόΧον τεταμενον, φύΧακα και Βημιουρ^ον νυκτός τε και 
 ημέρας εμη-χ^ανησατο, ττρώτην και ττρεσβυτάτην θεών, όσοι 
 εντός ουρανού ηεηόνασι. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Ε ^ης τε και Ουρανού τταιΒες ^ίΐκεανός τε και Ύηθύς ε'γενε- 
 σθην, τούτων Βε Φορκυς Ι^ρόνος τε καϊ 'Pea και όσοι μετά 
 
 41 τούτων, εκ Βε Κρόνου καϊ 'Pea? Ζευς 'Ήρα re καϊ ττάντες, 
 όσους ϊσμεν άΒεΧφούς Χε^ομενους αυτών, ετι τε τούτων 
 άΧΧους εκyovoυς. 'ETrel δ* ούν ττάντες, όσοι τε ττεριττοΧοΰσι 
 φανερώς καϊ όσοι φαίνονται καβ* όσον αν εθεΧωσι, οι θεοί 
 ^ενεσιν εσ'χον, Xeyei Βη ττρος αυτούς ό τόΒε το ττάν 
 'γεννησας τάΒε• @eot θεών, ων iyo) Βημιουρ^ος ττατηρ τε 
 ερηων, α Βι εμού "γενόμενα άλυτα εμού yε εθεΧοντος. το 
 
THE TIMAEUS 273 
 
 did He think it meet that this Universe also should contain. 
 Now, these Forms are four : first, there is the heavenly race 
 of the gods ; then the race of winged fowls of the air ; third, 
 the kind that liveth in the water ; and fourth, the kind that 
 walketh on the dry land. 
 
 The Form of the Godhead He consecrated and made for 
 the most part of fire, that it might be brightest of all and 
 fairest to look upon ; and likening it unto the Universe He 
 made it spherical, and set it in the Path of the Wisdom of the 
 Highest to go therewith, and distributed it over all the spangled 
 round of Heaven, to be a true adornment thereof. And unto 
 every one of the divine stars He gave two motions — the one 
 motion in the same place, and itself the same without changing, 
 which is the motion of him who is true unto himself and 
 thinketh alway the same thoughts concerning the same 
 things; and the other motion forward, controlled by the 
 revolution of the Same and the Like : but in respect of the 
 other five motions He made it stand still. For this cause 
 were those stars created which wander not, but, turning round 
 with uniform motion, each one in his own place, therein alway 
 abide, being living creatures divine and eternal. 
 
 As for the stars which wander, they were created in the 
 manner which hath been told. 
 
 And Earth, our nursing mother, which is wrapped round 
 about the line which extendeth from pole to pole, she was 
 fashioned to be the guardian and maker of night and day, the 
 first and eldest of the gods which were created within the 
 Heaven. 
 
 ■«• * * -if -K- -χ- 
 
 Of Earth and Heaven were born Ocean and Tethys ; of 
 these were born Phorkys and Cronus and Ehea and their 
 brethren ; and of Cronus and Khea were born Zeus and Hera 
 and their brethren, whose names are made mention of; and 
 these, again, had children. 
 
 Now, when all the gods were born — both gods visible in 
 their heavenly courses, and gods which make themselves visible 
 as it pleaseth them — then spake unto them the Begetter of 
 this Universe, saying : Gods of gods whose Maker and Father 
 I am, ye are the creatures of my handiwork, and without me 
 are ye not loosed asunder ; for verily that which is bound to- 
 
 T 
 
274 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 μεν ovv hrf heOev τταν \υτ6ν, τ6 ye μην καλώς άρμοσθεν 
 Β καΐ €'χρν ev Xvecv eOekeiv κάκου, hi a και eTreiirep 
 ^γ€<γ6νησθ€, αθάνατοι μβν ουκ iare ουδ' άλυτοι το ττάμτταν, 
 ου τι μεν Βη λυθησβσθε ye ούΒε τβύξεσθε θανάτου μοίρας, 
 της €μης βουλήσεως μείζονος βτι Βεσμοϋ καϊ κυριωτέρου 
 λαγόντες εκείνων, οίς 6τ εyίyvεσθε ξυνεΒεΐσθε, νυν ουν ο 
 λεyω ττρος υμάς ενΒεικνύ μένος, μάθετε. θνητά ετι yεvη 
 λοιττα τρι άyεvvητa, τούτων Βε μη yεvoμεvωv ουρανός 
 ατελής εσταΐ' τα yap άτταντ εν αυτω yεvη ζωών ουχ εξει, 
 C ΒεΙ Βε, εΐ μέλλει τελεος ίκανώς είναι. Βι εμού Βε ταύτα 
 yεvόμεva και βίου μετασγρντα θεοΐς Ισάζοιτ αν. ϊνα οΰν 
 θνητά τε y το τε τταν τοΒε όντως ατταν y, τρεττεσθε κατά, 
 φύσιν ύμεΐς εττι τήν των ζώων Bημιoυpyίav, μιμούμενοι τήν 
 εμήν Βύναμιν ττερί τήν ύμετεραν yεvεσιv. και καθ^ όσον 
 μεν αυτών άθανάτοις ομώνυμον είναι ττροσήκει, θείον λεy6- 
 μενον ήyεμovoϋv τε εν αύτοΐς τών άει Βίκτ) και ύμΐν 
 εθελοντών εττεσθαι, σττείρας και ύτταρξάμενος εγώ τταραΒώσω* 
 D το Βε λοιττον ύμεΐς, άθανάτω θνητον ττροσυφαίνοντες, ά'π^εpyά- 
 ζεσθε ζώα και yεvvάτε τροφήν τε ΒιΒόντες αυξάνετε και 
 φθίνοντα ττάλιν Βε'χεσθε. 
 
 Ταυτ ειττε, και ττάλιν εττϊ τον ττρότερον κρατήρα, εν 
 ω την του τταντος ψυχτ)ν κεραννύς eμισyε, τα τών ττρόσθεν 
 ύτΓολοιττα κατε'χείτο μίσyωv τρόττον μεν τίνα τον αυτόν, 
 ακήρατα Β ούκετι κατά ταύτα ωσαύτως, άλλα Βεύτερα καϊ 
 τρίτα, ξυστήσας Βε το τταν Βιεΐλε ψυ'χ^ας ισαρίθμους τοις 
 Ε άστροις, ενειμε θ* εκάστην ττρος εκαστον, καϊ εμβιβάσας 
 ώς εις ογτ^μα την του τταντος φύσιν εΒειξε, νόμους τε τους 
 είμαρμενους είττεν αύταΐς, οτι yevεσις ττρώτη μεν εσοιτο 
 τετayμεvη μία ττασιν, ϊνα μή τις ελαττοΐτο ύττ αύτοϋ, Βέοι 
 Βε στταρείσας αύτας εις τα ττροσήκοντα εκάστοις έκαστα 
 
THE TIMAEUS 275 
 
 gether can alway be loosed asunder ; but none save an evil one 
 would desire to loose asunder that whereof the parts are well 
 joined together and the whole state is goodly. Wherefore, 
 being creatures, ye are not altogether set apart from death so 
 that ye cannot be loosed asunder : nevertheless, loosed asunder 
 ye shall not be, nor shall ye partake of death, because that my 
 will, which is your portion, is a greater bond and prevaileth 
 more than all those bonds wherewith your parts were bound 
 together when ye were created. 
 
 Now give ear unto that which I declare unto you. Three 
 mortal kinds are yet uncreated. If these be not brought 
 forth, the Heaven will be imperfect ; for it will not have in 
 itself all the kinds of living creatures ; yet must it have all, if 
 it is to be fully perfect. But if these were brought into being 
 by me, and by me made partakers of life, they would be 
 equals to gods. Wherefore, to the end that they be mortal 
 and that this Universe — this All, be truly All, turn ye, 
 according to nature, to the making of living creatures, having 
 the faculty, for an ensample, wherewith I created you. 
 
 That part of them whereunto it belongeth to partake in 
 the name of immortal — that part, to wit, which is called divine 
 and is leader in them of those parts which alway do desire to 
 follow after righteousness and after you — that part I, having 
 sown to be a beginning, will deliver unto you. Thereafter do 
 ye, weaving the mortal upon the immortal, fashion living 
 creatures and beget them, and giving them nourishment in- 
 crease them, and when they die receive them again. Thus He 
 spake, and again He took the bowl wherein afore He compounded 
 and mixed the elements of the Soul of the All, and into this 
 bowl He poured that which was left over of the elements, mix- 
 ing them as afore ; yet now were they not so pure as at first, 
 but second and third in quality. 
 
 Then, when He had made of them one mixture. He took and 
 divided Souls therefrom, as many as there are stars, and to each 
 star he assigned a Soul, and caused each Soul to go up into her 
 star as into a chariot, and showed unto her the nature of the 
 All, and declared the laws thereof which are fixed and shall 
 not be moved, to wit, that it was appointed that the first birth 
 should be for all the same, so that no Soul should fare worse 
 at His hands than another, and that all, having been cast as 
 
276 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 opyava 'χ^ρόνων φνναί ζώων το θεοσεβέστατον, ΒίττΧης δε 
 42 ούσης της άνθρωττίνηζ φύσεως το κρβΐττον τοιούτον €Ϊη 
 <γ€νος, ο καΐ βττειτα κεκΧησοιτο άνήρ. οττότε Βη σώμασίν 
 €μφντ€νΘ6Ϊ€ν έξ άνά^κης^ και το μεν ττροσίοι, το Β' άττίου 
 του σώματος αύτων, ττρώτον μεν αϊσθησιν αναηκαΐον είη 
 μίαν Ίτασιν εκ βίαιων τταθημάτων ξύμφυτον ηίηνεσθαι, 
 Βεύτερον Βε ηΒοντ} καΐ Χνττη μεμ^γμένον έρωτα, ττρος Βε 
 
 Β τούτοις φόβον καΐ θνμον οσα τε εττομενα αύτοΐς καΐ οττοσα 
 εναντίως ττεφυκε Βίε^τηκότα' ών εΐ μεν κρατησοιεν, εν Βίκη 
 βίώσοίντο, κρατηθεντες Βε άΒικία. καΐ 6 μεν εν τον ττροσ- 
 ηκοντα γ^ρονον βιούς, τταΧιν εΙς την του ξυννόμου πορευθείς 
 οϊκησιν άστρου y βίον εύΒαίμονα καΐ συνήθη εξοί' σφαΧεϊς 
 Βε τούτων εις γυναικός φύσιν εν ttj Βευτερα 'γενέσει, μετα- 
 
 C βαΧοΐ, μη τταυόμενός τε εν τούτοις ετι κακίας, τρόττον ον 
 κακύνοιτο, κατά την ομοιότητα της του τρόττου 'γενέσεως 
 εϊς τίνα τοιαύτην άει μεταβαΧοΐ θηρειον φύσιν, άΧΧάττων 
 τε ου Ίτροτερον ττόνων Χηξοι, ττρίν ττ} ταύτοΰ καϊ ομοίου 
 ΊτεριόΒω τχί εν αυτω ξυνεττιστόμενος τον ττοΧύν ογΧον και 
 
 D ύστερον ττροσφύντα εκ ττυρος και ΰΒατος και αέρος καϊ γης, 
 θορυβώΒη και aXoyov οντά, λόγω κρατησας εις το της 
 Ίτρώτης καϊ αρίστης άφίκοιτο εΙΒος εξεως, Αιαθεσμοθετήσας 
 Βε ττάντα αύτοΐς ταύτα, ϊνα της εττειτα εϊη κακίας εκάστων 
 αναίτιος, εσττειρε τους μεν εΙς jijv, τους δ' εις σεΧηνην, 
 τους δ' εΙς ταΧΧα οσα opyava 'χρόνου, το Βε μετά τον 
 στΓορον τοις νεοις τταρεΒωκε θεοΐς σώματα ττΧάττειν θνητά, 
 το τε ετΓίΧοιτΓον όσον ετι ην 'ψ'υ^ής άνθρωττίνης Βεον 
 
 Ε ττροσγενεσθαι, τούτο και ττάνθ^ οσα άκοΧουθα εκείνοις άττερ- 
 γασαμενους άργειν, καϊ κατά Βύναμιν 6 τι κάΧΧιστα καϊ 
 
THE TIMAEUS 277 
 
 seed upon the Instruments of Time, each upon the Instrument 
 suitable for her, must first be born in the flesh of that living 
 creature which feareth God most ; and, since human nature 
 hath two kinds, in the flesh of that kind which is the better, 
 which thereafter should be called Man. Therefore, whereas 
 Souls of necessity should be implanted in Bodies, and of the 
 Body there should be that which cometh and that which goeth, 
 first must all Souls have implanted in them at their birth one 
 sense collected from the passions which assault them ; more- 
 over, all must have born in them love made up of pleasure and 
 pain, and in addition thereto fear and anger and all the other 
 passions which do go together with these, and also as many as 
 are by nature contrary to these — and if any man should hold 
 these passions in subjection, his life would be righteous ; but 
 unrighteous, if he should be overcome of them ; and whosoever 
 lived virtuously all the time appointed unto him should 
 journey back to his kindred star and dwell there, and there 
 should have a life blessed and conform unto his nature : but 
 whosoever fell short of this, he in the second birth should pass 
 into the nature of Woman; and if therein he refrained not 
 from wickedness, then, according to the likeness of that wicked- 
 ness whereunto he turned him, should he pass alway into the 
 nature of some Beast, and should not be rid of the labour of 
 these changes until, having closely followed the Circuit of the 
 Same and the Like which is in himself, he should, by the 
 might of reason, overcome all that unreasonable, tumultuous 
 crowd which was afterward gathered about him from the ele- 
 ments of fire and water and air and earth, and should come 
 again unto his first and best estate. 
 
 He having made all these ordinances for them, that He 
 might be blameless as touching the wickedness which should 
 be thereafter in each one of them, sowed some on the Earth 
 and some on the Moon and some on the other Instruments of 
 Time ; and all that should come after the sowing He delivered 
 unto the Young Gods, to wit, the moulding of mortal bodies and 
 the fashioning of all parts (together with all their appurte- 
 nances) that yet remained of man's Soul which must be added 
 thereto : all this did He deliver unto the Young Gods, that 
 thereby they might have rule over the living creature which 
 is mortal, and might gtiide it, after their ability, to walk in 
 
278 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 άριστα το Θνητον διακυβερνούν ζώον, 6 τί μη κακών αντο 
 ίαντω yiyvoiTO αϊτών, 
 
 Καϊ 6 μβν Βη ατταντα ταύτα Βιατάξας βμβνεν βν τω 
 eavTov κατά τρόττον ηθβι* μένοντος Sk νοησαντ€ς οί τταΐΒες 
 την του ττατρος Βίάταξίν ίττβίθοντο αύτη, καϊ \αβ6ντ€ς 
 άθάνατον αργτ^ν θνητού ζώου, μιμούμενοι τον σφβτερον 
 Βημιουρ'γόν, ττυρος καϊ ^ής ΰΒατ6<ζ Τ€ καϊ άερος άττο τον 
 
 43 κόσμου δανειζόμενοι μόρια ώ? άττοΒοθησόμενα τταΚιν, eh 
 ταύτον τα Χαμβανόμενα συνεκόΧλων, ου τοις αλύτοις oh 
 αύτοΙ ξυνεί'χ^οντο Βεσμοΐς, άΧλα 8ici σμικρότητα άοράτοις 
 ττυκνοΐς <γόμφοι<ζ ξυντηκοντες, εν εξ άττάντων άττ εργαζόμενο ι 
 σώμα εκαστον, τας της αθανάτου ^^τυγγις ττεριόΒους ενεΒονν 
 εις εττίρρυτον σώμα και άττόρρυτον, αΐ δ' εΙς ττοταμον 
 ενΒεθεΐσαι ττοΧύν οΰτ εκράτονν ούτ εκρατουντο, βία δε 
 
 Β εψέροντο και έφεραν, ώστε το μεν οΚον κινεΐσθαι ζώον, 
 ατάκτως μην οττη τύγρι ττροϊεναι και όΧό^ως, τας εξ 
 άττάσας κινήσεις ε'χρν εϊς τε yap το ττρόσθεν καϊ οττισθεν 
 και ΊΓοΚιν εις Βεξιά και αριστερά κάτω τε καϊ άνω και 
 ττάντη κατά τους εξ τόττους ττλανώμενα ΤΓροηειν. ττολλοΟ 
 yap οντος του κατακΧύζοντος καϊ άττορρεοντος κύματος, ο 
 την τροφην τταρεΐγεν, ετι μείζω θόρυβον ά7Γειρyάζετo τα 
 
 C τών ττροστΓίΤΓτόντων τταθήματα εκάστοις, οτε ττυρί ττροσ- 
 κρουσειε το σώμα τίνος έξωθεν άΧΧοτρίω ττεριτυγρν η κα\ 
 στερεω yης {jypoh τε όΧισθημασιν ύΒάτων, εϊτε ζάΧη 
 ττνευμάτων ύττ άερος φερομένων καταΧηφθείη, και ύττο 
 ττάντων τούτων Βιά του σώματος αί κινήσεις εττΐ την ψυ'χην 
 φερομεναι ττροσττίτττοιεν* αΐ Βη καϊ εττειτα Βιά ταύτα 
 εκΧήθησάν τε καϊ νυν ετι αισθήσεις ξυνάττασαι κεκΧηνται. 
 * % * * % * 
 
 44 καϊ Βια Βή ταύτα ιτάντα τα τταθήματα νυν κατ άρ'χάς τε 
 
THE TIMAEUS 279 
 
 the most honourable and perfect way, without evil, save that 
 which it should itself bring upon itself. 
 
 All these things did He ordain, and thereafter abode in 
 His own proper nature. Therein He abode; and His sons, having 
 comprehended their Father's ordinance, were obedient unto it, 
 and having received the immortal beginning of the living 
 creature which is mortal, they took their own Maker for an 
 ensample, and borrowed from the Universe portions of fire 
 and earth and water and air which should be restored again : 
 these they took and cemented together, not with the bonds 
 which cannot be loosed wherewith they themselves were held 
 together ; but with bolts innumerable, invisible by reason of 
 smallness, they welded them, and out of them all fashioned 
 one body for each living creature, binding the Circuits of 
 Immortal Soul within Body that consisteth in perpetual 
 influx and efflux. 
 
 Now the Circuits of the Soul, having been bound within 
 the Kiver of the Body which floweth mightily, neither had 
 the mastery over it, nor were they mastered, but were pushed 
 about, and did push with violence, so that the whole creature 
 was moved, and went hither and thither disorderly, by chance, 
 without forethought, having all the six motions ; for forward and 
 backward, and to the right and to the left, and down and up, 
 did the creatures go, wandering towards all the six points ; 
 because that the flood was great which did swell up over them 
 supplying their nourishment, and then again did flow away 
 from them; and yet greater was the commotion that was 
 made in them by the blows of those things which did strike 
 against them — to wit, when the body of any living creature 
 happened on something without, foreign from itself, and 
 therewith had contact — with fire, or with soKd earth, or 
 smoothly sliding water, or if at any time it was overtaken by 
 the blast of winds borne along in the air; and then the 
 motions caused by all these were carried through the Body 
 into the Soul and beat upon her. Wherefore were all these 
 motions together called aesthises} and still are so called. 
 
 ■X- * * -if * * 
 
 By reason of these assaults of the passions which are 
 made upon her, the Soul now, as in the beginning, loseth 
 
 1 Plato seems to derive αϊσθησα, "sensation," from άΐσαζίν, "to rush violently." 
 
280 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Β ανους ψνχ^η yiyverat το ιτρώτον, όταν eh σώμα ivBeOrj 
 θνητόν* όταν δε το της αϋξης καϊ τροφής βλαττον εττίτ) 
 ρβνμα, ΊτάΚιν he at irepLohoL \αμβανόμ€ναι ^γα\ηνης την 
 eavTOiv ohov ϊωσι καϊ καθιστώντας μάΧΚον ίττιόντος του 
 χρόνου, τ6τ€ ήΒη ττρος το κατά φύσι,ν Ιόντων σγτιμα 
 €κάστων των κνκΚων αϊ 7repLφopal κaτevθvvoμevac, το Τ6 
 OaTepov καϊ το ταύτον 7rpoσayopeύoυσaι, κατ ορθόν, €μφρονα 
 τον €'χοντα αυτας ^ι^νόμενον ά7ΓθΤ€\οΰσιν, αν μ€ν ονν Βη 
 
 C καϊ ξvve7Γl\aμβάvητaί τίς όρθη τροφή 7Γal•Beύσ€ως, όΧο- 
 κΧηρος υ^ίής Τ€ τταντέΧώς, την μ^^ίστην άττοφνγων νοσον, 
 yiyvcTaL* καταμ€\ησας Be, 'χωΧην του βίου Βία7Γορ€υθ€Ϊς 
 ζωην, aTeXrj^ καϊ άνόνητος ^ eh 'ΆίΒου ιταΚιν €ρ'χ€ταί. ταύτα 
 μίν ουν ΰστepά iroTe yiyveTai' 'TΓepϊ Be των νυν 'π^poτeθevτωv 
 Bel Bιe\θeΐv άκpιβeστepov. τα Be ιτρο τούτων, irepi σωμά- 
 των κατά μέρη της yeveσeως καϊ 7Γeρϊ ψυ-χης. Be ας τ€ 
 αίτιας καϊ ττρονοίας yeyove θeώv, του μάλιστα eίκότoς 
 
 D άvτe'χpμevoLς, οΰτω καϊ κατά ταύτα 7Γopeυoμevoις Bie^iTeov, 
 Ύας μ^ν Βη θeίaς 7ΓepίόBoυς Βύο οΰσας, το του τταντος 
 σχήμα ά7Γομιμησάμ€νοι 7Γepίφepeς ον, eίς σφaφoecBeς σώμα 
 €νέΒησαν, τούτο ο νυν κeφaXηv e^ΓOvoμάζoμev, ο θetότaτόv 
 τ έστϊ καϊ των ev ήμΐν ττάντων δεσττοτοΟϊ/. ω καϊ ττάν 
 το σώμα τταρέΒοσαν υ7Γηpeσίav αύτω ξυvaθpoίσavτeς θeoί, 
 κaτavoησavτeς, οτι ττασών οσαι κινήσεις εσοιντο μ€Τ€'χοί• 
 ϊν ουν μη κυΧινΒούμενον eVl yής ΰψη τε καϊ βάθη 
 
 Ε τταντοΒαττα έγούσης άποροι τα μεν ύττερβαίνειν, ένθεν 
 Be εκβαίνειν, οχημ αύτω τούτο καϊ εύττορίαν εΒοσαν. όθεν 
 Βη μήκος το σώμα εσχεν, εκτατά τε κώ\α καϊ καμτττά 
 εφυσε, τετταρα θεού μηγανησαμενου ττορεΐα, oh άντιλαμ- 
 βανόμενον καϊ άττερειΒομενον Βιά ττάντων τόττων ττορεύεσθαι 
 45 Βυνατον yεyovε την του θειοτάτου καϊ Ιερωτάτου φερον 
 όΐκησιν εττάνωθεν ημών. σκεΧη μεν ουν χείρες τε ταύττ} 
 
 ^ άν6ητο$. 
 
THE TIMAEUS 281 
 
 understanding when she is first bound unto the mortal body ; 
 but when the stream of growth and nourishment abateth of 
 his influx, and the Circuits of the Soul are gotten into smooth 
 waters, and go their own way, and are become more constant 
 as time passeth on, then at last are they brought into the 
 perfect form of the natural motion which is proper unto each 
 of the Circles, and marking and naming the Other and the 
 Same aright, they cause him who possesseth them to have 
 understanding; and if right teaching also take part in the 
 work, he becometh whole and altogether sound, having escaped 
 that disease which is the greatest of all ; but if he give not 
 heed unto this teaching, he journeyeth halt through this 
 present life, and, without initiation, and without understanding, 
 Cometh again unto Hades. 
 
 But these be things which come to pass afterward ; it 
 behoves us rather to tell more exactly concerning the matter 
 which now we have in hand, and concerning the matter 
 which is precedent thereto, to wit, concerning the generation 
 of the Body with the parts thereof, and concerning the Soul 
 and the causes and purposes of the Gods by reason whereof 
 she was generated. All these things, therefore, let us ex- 
 pound, alway holding fast in our discourse unto that which 
 seemeth most likely. 
 
 The Young Gods, taking for a pattern the shape of the 
 Universe which is a globe, bound the Divine Circles, which are 
 twain, within this corporeal ball which we now call Head, which 
 is the divinest of our parts, and hath lordship over them all. 
 Unto the Head, to minister unto it, the Gods gave the whole 
 Body which they had compacted together ; for they perceived 
 that unto the Head belonged all the motions which should be. 
 Wherefore, that it might not go rolling upon the earth, which 
 hath heights and depths of every sort, finding no way of 
 getting over those or out of these, to this end gave they 
 unto it the Body for a carriage, to make the way easy for it. 
 Wherefore the Body got length, and put forth limbs which 
 were able to be stretched out and to be bent, four in number ; 
 for thus did the Gods devise means of going about, so that 
 the Body, therewith taking hold and pushing off, could go 
 through all places, bearing aloft the temple of that which in 
 us is the most divine a'hd the most holy. In this wise, then, 
 
282 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 καΙ Bta ταντα ιτροσίφυ ττάσΐ' του δ' οττισθβν το ττρόσθβν 
 τιμίώτ€ρον καΐ άρ'χικώτβρον νομ,ίζοντε^ θβοί ταύττ) το ττοΧύ 
 της ΊΓορβίας ημΐν ehoaav, eBei 8η Βίωρίσμβνον β'χειν καϊ 
 άνόμοίον του σώματος το ττρόσθβν άνθρωττον. Βίο Βη 
 Ίτρωτον μβν irepl το της κ€φαλής κύτος, ύττοθέντες αύτοσε 
 το ττρόσωτΓον, opyava ένέΒησαν τούτω ιτάστ) ττ} της ^Ιτυγ^ς 
 
 Β ττρονοία, καϊ Βίβτάξαντο μβτί'χρν ηγεμονίας τοΰτ elvac το 
 κατά, φύσιν πτρόσθβν. των Be οργάνων πρώτον μεν φωσφόρα 
 ξυν€Τ€Κτήναντο όμματα, TocaBe ίνΒησαντες αίτια, του ττυρος 
 όσον το μεν κάειν ουκ εσγβ, το Be irape^eiv φως ημερον, 
 οίκεΐον εκάστης ημέρας, σώμα εμη'χανησαντο ^ίηνεσθαι, το 
 yap εντός ημών άΒεΧφον ον τούτου ττυρ εΙΧικρινες εποίησαν 
 Βίά τών ομμάτων ρείν Χεΐον ^ καϊ ττυκνόν, 6\ον μεν, μάΧοστα 
 
 C Βε το μέσον ξυμττιλησαντες τών ομμάτων, ώστε το μεν 
 αλΧο όσον πα'χύτερον στετ^ειν παν, το τοιούτον Βε μόνον 
 αύτο καθαρον Βίηθεΐν, όταν οΰν μεθημερινον η φώς περί 
 το της όψεως ρεύμα, τότ εκπΐπτον ομοιον προς ομοιον, 
 ξυμπα^ες ηενόμενον, εν σώμα οίκειωθεν συνεστη κατά την 
 τών ομμάτων εύθυωρίαν, οπΎ)περ άντερείΒει το προσπΐπτον 
 ενΒοθεν προς ο τών εξω συνεπεσεν. ομοίοπαθες Βη Bl 
 ομοιότητα παν ηενόμενον, ότου τε αν αύτο ποτέ εφάπτηται 
 
 D και ο αν αλ\ο εκείνου, τούτων τάς κινήσεις ΒιαΒιΒον εις 
 άπαν το σώμα μ^χρί της ψυχής αϊσθησιν παρέσχετο 
 ταύτην, η Βη οραν φαμεν. άπεΧθόντος Βε εις νύκτα του 
 ξυ^^ενοϋς πυρός άποτετμηταΐ' προς yap άνόμοιον εξιον 
 άΧλοιουταί τε αύτο και κατασβεννυται, ξυμφυες ούκέτι τω 
 
 πΧησίον άερι yιyv6μεvov, άτε πυρ ουκ εχοντι, 
 
 ****** 
 46 C ταϋτ ουν πάντα εστί τών ξυναιτίων, οίς θεός ύπηρε- 
 τοΰσι χρήται την του αρίστου κατά το Βυνατον ΙΒεαν 
 D άποτεΧών Βοξάζεται Βε ύπο τών πΧείστων ου ξυναίτια 
 
 1 ρεΊν, Xehv. 
 
THE TIMAEUS 283 
 
 and for this end, were legs and hands put forth and added 
 unto all men : and the Gods, thinking that that which is 
 before is more honourable than that which is behind, and 
 more able to lead, made man to go for the most part forward ; 
 wherefore must he needs have the forepart of his body dis- 
 tinct from the hind part and dissimilar. For this reason 
 they first put the face on the forepart of the vessel of the 
 Head, and fixed therein the instruments which should minister 
 in every way unto the forethought of the Soul, having 
 ordained that that which hath ability to lead should be that 
 which is by nature before. First of these instruments they 
 fashioned light-bringing eyes, and fixed them in, after this 
 wise. Out of that fire which hath not the power of burning, 
 but is able to give gentle light — that light, to wit, which 
 belongeth to day — they contrived and made a body ; for the 
 pure fire, twin-born therewith, which is within us they did 
 cause to flow through the eyes, having compressed their 
 substance throughout, but most of all in the mid part thereof, 
 so that it was made smooth and dense, and held in whatsoever 
 in the light was thick, and let only the light itself strain 
 through in a pure stream. When, therefore, the light of day 
 is round about the visual stream, then doth the stream, going 
 forth, like unto like, compactly join itself unto that stream 
 without against the which the stream that cometh from within 
 doth thrust itself, and these two being blended together make 
 one body which is extended in a straight line from the eyes. 
 The visual stream, then, since it is compact of parts altogether 
 like, receiveth altogether like affections ; and when it toucheth 
 anything, and something else toucheth that, it passeth their 
 motions on throughout the whole Body, until they come unto 
 the Soul, and so it causeth that sense wherewith we say that 
 we see. But when the kindred fire is gone away into night, 
 then is the visual stream cut off; for, going forth into that 
 which is unlike itself, it is changed and quenched, no longer 
 becoming consubstantial with the air round about, because 
 that the air hath in it no fire. 
 
 * * * 4(• * * 
 
 Now these be all auxiliary causes which God maketh 
 subservient unto His design of bringing the Idea of the Best 
 into act, as far as is possihle ; but most men are of opinion 
 
284 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 αλλ' αίτια elvai των ττάντων, ψυγ^οντα καϊ θβρμαίνοντα 
 ττηιγννντα τ€ καϊ Βια-χ^εοντα καϊ οσα τοιαύτα άττβρ^αζόμβνα, 
 \ό<γον δέ ovBiva ovSe νουν eh ovBev Βννατα e^euv €στί, 
 των yap όντων ω νουν μόνω κτασθαι προσήκει^ Χβκτέον 
 ψν^ήν* τοϋτο Be άόρατον, ττΰρ Be καϊ νΒωρ καϊ γη καϊ 
 αηρ σώματα ιτάντα ορατά yeyove, τον Be νου καϊ έττιστή- 
 
 Ε μης έραστην avayKy τας τή^ εμφρονος φύσεως αίτιας 
 ττρώτας μεταΒίώκειν, οσαι Be νττ αΧΚων μεν κινουμένων, 
 έτερα δ* εξ ανάγκης κινούντων yiyvovTai, Βευτερας, 
 ΤΓΟιητεον Βη κατά ταύτα καϊ ήμΐν, Χεκτεα μεν αμφότερα 
 τα των αιτιών yεvη, χωρϊς Βε οσαι μετά νου καΧών καϊ 
 ayaQtav Bημιoυpyoϊ καϊ οσαι μονωθεΐσαι φρονήσεως το 
 τυγρν άτακτον εκάστοτε εξεpyάζovτaι, ταΐ μεν ουν των 
 ομμάτων ξυμμεταίτια ττρος το ε'χειν την Βνναμιν, ην νυν 
 εϊΧηγεν, ειρήσθω* το Βε μεyιστov αυτών εις ώφελειαν 
 47 epyov, Βι ο θεός ,αΰθ ήμΐν ΒεΒώρηται, μετά τούτο ρητεον. 
 οψις Βη κατά τον εμον \6yov αιτία της μεyίστης ώφεΧείας 
 yεyovεv ήμΐν, οτι τών νυν \6yωv ττερϊ του τταντος \εyo' 
 μένων ούΒεϊς αν ττοτε ερρήθη μήτε άστρα μήτε ήΧιον μήτε 
 ούρανον ιΒόντων. νυν δ' ήμερα τε καϊ νυξ οφθεΐσαι μήνες 
 τε καϊ ενιαυτών ττερίοΒοι μεμηγάνηνται μεν αριθμόν, χρόνου 
 Βε εννοιαν ττερί τε της του τταντος φύσεως ζήτησιν εΒοσαν 
 εξ ών ετΓορισάμεθα φιλοσοφίας yεvoς, ου μείζον aya0ov 
 
 Β οΰτ ήΧθεν ούθ^ ήξει ττοτε τω θνητά yεvει Βωρηθεν εκ 
 θεών. Xεyω Βη τούτο ομμάτων μεyιστov άyaθόv, τάΧΧα 
 Βε, οσα εΧάττω, τι άν ύμνοΐμεν ; ών ο μη φιΧοσοφος 
 τυφΧωθεϊς οΒυρόμενος αν θρήνοι μάτην. άΧΧά τούτου 
 Xεyεσθω τταρ' ημών αύτη εττϊ ταύτα αιτία, θεον ήμΐν 
 άνευρεΐν Βωρήσασθαί τε όψιν, 'ίνα τάς'εν ούρανω του νου 
 κατιΒόντες ττεριόΒους χρησαίμεθα εττϊ τάς ττεριφοράς τας 
 
THE TIMAEUS 285 
 
 that they are not auxiliary causes, but true causes which, by 
 cooling and heating, and thickening and thinning, and the 
 like, do produce all things. And yet these operations can in 
 no wise have in them understanding or design of aught ; for 
 of things which be, unto one alone it belongeth to have 
 understanding, and that one, let it be declared, is Soul ; which 
 is invisible ; but Fire and Water and Earth and Air all are 
 visible creatures. Wherefore the lover of understanding and 
 knowledge must first follow after those causes which appertain 
 unto the Intelligible World, and then, secondly, after those 
 which are made manifest when one thing, being moved, 
 moveth another thing of necessity. 
 
 This, then, must we also do, speaking concerning both 
 kinds, but making separation between those causes which 
 with understanding are artificers of things fair and good, and 
 those which without knowledge produce disorderly what 
 chanceth at any time. Concerning the auxiliary causes 
 which helped to give unto eyes that faculty which they now 
 have, enough hath been said; now, therefore, let us declare 
 that benefit wrought by eyes — great above all benefits — for 
 whose sake God bestowed them upon us. 
 
 Eyesight, methinks, hath been the cause unto us of the 
 greatest benefit, inasmuch as no word of our present discourse 
 concerning the Universe would have been spoken, if we had 
 seen neither stars nor sun nor heavens : whereas now day and 
 night and the months and the circuits of the years, passing 
 before our eyes, have discovered unto us Number, and given 
 unto us a notion of Time, and set us a-seeking to know the 
 nature of the All : whence we have gotten us Philosophy, 
 than which no greater good hath come, nor ever shall come, as 
 gift from gods unto mortal kind. 
 
 I say, then, that this is the greatest good from eyes ; and 
 the other benefits therefrom which are all less than this, 
 wherefore should I recount them ? Let the man who is 
 without Philosophy break out into vain lamentations, because, 
 forsooth, he is blind and hath not these small things : as for 
 ourselves, we will declare the cause of vision in this wise and 
 the chief end thereof : — God invented vision and gave it unto 
 us for a gift, to the end that, having observed the Circuits of 
 Intelligence in the Heaven, we might use them for the revolu- 
 
286 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 C της Trap' ήμΐν 8ίανοησ6ω<ζ, ξvyyev€ΐς i/ceivai^ ονσας, άτα- 
 ράκτοις T€Tapay μάνας, €κμαθ6ντ€ς Se καϊ Χο^ίσμών κατά 
 ψνσιν ορθότητας μβτασχ^όντες μιμούμενοι, τας του θβον 
 πάντως άττλανεΐς ούσας τας iv ήμΐν ττεττΧανημβνας κατα- 
 στησαίμβθα. Φωνής τε Βη καϊ άκοης irepi ττάΧιν ο αύτος 
 λόγο?, eVl ταύτα των αυτών ένεκα τταρα θεών ΒεΒωρησθαι. 
 X6yoς τε yap εττ αυτά ταύτα τετακταί^ την μεyίστηv 
 ξνμβαΧλόμενος εΙς αυτά μοΐραν, όσον τ αύ μουσικής φων^ 
 
 D γρήσιμον, ττρος άκοην ένεκα αρμονίας εστί Βοθεν ή 8ε 
 αρμονία, ξυyyεvεlς εχ^ουσα φοράς ταΐς εν ήμΐν της ψυχρής 
 ΊτεριόΒοις, τω μετά νου ιτροσγρωμενω Ήίούσαις ούκ εφ> ήΒονήν 
 aXoyov, καθάττερ νυν, είναι Βοκεΐ 'χρήσιμος, αλλ εττΐ την 
 yεyovυΐav εν ήμΐν άνάρμοστον Λΐ^υχής ττερίοΒον εις κατα- 
 κόσμησιν καϊ συμφωνίαν εαυτή σύμμαχος ύττο Μουσών 
 ΒέΒοταΐ' και ρυθμός αύ Βιά την άμετρον εν ήμΐν και 
 
 Ε χαρίτων εττιΒεά yLyvoμεvηv εν τοις ττΚείστοις εξιν επίκουρος 
 ετΓΐ ταύτα υττο των αυτών εοοση. 
 
 Ύά μεν ούν τταρεΧηΧυθότα τών ειρημενων, ττΧήν 
 βραχέων, εττιΒεΒεικται τά Βιά νου BεBημιoυpyημέva• Βεΐ Βε 
 και τά Βι άνότ^κης yιyv6μεva τω λόγω τταραθεσθαι. 
 
 48 μεμιyμέvη yap ούν ή τούΒε του κόσμου yεvεσις εξ άvάyκης 
 τε καϊ νου συστάσεως εyεvvήθη• νου Βε άvάyκης άρχοντος 
 τω Ίτείθειν αυτήν τών yιyvoμεvωv τά ττΧεΐστα εττι το 
 βεΧτιστον άyειv, ταύτη κατά ταύτα τε Βι άvάyκης ήττω- 
 μενης ύττο ττειθούς εμφρονος ούτω κατ αρχάς ξυνίστατο 
 τόΒε το Ίταν. εϊ τις ούν ή yεyovε, κατά ταύτα όντως ερεΐ, 
 μικτεον καϊ το της πτΧανωμενης εΙΒος αίτιας, ή φερειν 
 ττέφυκεν, ώΒε ούν ττάΧιν άναχωρητεον, καϊ Χαβούσιν 
 
 Β αυτών τούτων Ίτροσήκουσαν ετεραν αρχήν αύθις αύ, καθάττερ 
 ττερϊ τών τότε, νυν ούτω ττερϊ τούτων ττάΧιν άρκτέον άττ 
 αρχής, τήν Βή ττρο τής ουρανού yεvεσεως ττυρος ύΒατός 
 
THE TIMAEUS 287 
 
 tions of Thought in ourselves, which are kin, albeit perturbed, 
 unto those unperturbed celestial courses ; and having throughly 
 learnt and become partakers in the truth of the reasonings 
 which are according to nature, might, by means of our imita- 
 tion of the Circuits of God which are without error altogether, 
 compose into order the circuits in ourselves which have erred. 
 
 Concerning Sound and Hearing let the same thing be said 
 — that they also have been bestowed by the Gods to the same 
 end as Sight. For to this end also hath Speech been ordained, 
 and maketh thereto the largest contribution ; and, moreover, 
 all that part of Music which is for the service of the Voice and 
 Hearing hath been given unto us for the sake of Harmony ; and 
 Harmony, having her courses kin unto the revolutions in our 
 Soul, hath been given by the Muses to be a helper unto the man 
 who, with understanding, shall use their art, not for the getting 
 of imreasonable pleasure — which is commonly esteemed the use 
 of Music — but for the ordering of the circuit of our Soul which 
 hath fallen out of harmony, and the bringing thereof into 
 concord with itself ; and Ehy thm also, because that the state of 
 most men is without measure and lacketh grace, hath been 
 given unto us for the same end, to aid us, by the same 
 Benefactors. 
 
 Hitherto hath this discourse been for the most part con- 
 cerning those things which are of the workmanship of Eeason ; 
 but now must it set by the side of these that which cometh 
 to pass of Necessity ; for, in truth, the generation of this 
 Universe was a mixed generation, sprung from the concurrence 
 of Necessity and Eeason. 
 
 Eeason exercised authority over Necessity by persuading 
 her to bring the most part of the things which were made unto 
 the Best Issue. According to this scheme, in the beginning, 
 was the Universe established through the instrumentality of 
 Necessity working in obedience unto the admonition of Wisdom. 
 If any man, therefore, would tell truly how this Universe is 
 come into being, he must include the natural operation of the 
 Cause Errant.^ Let us then turn back, and, having taken up 
 this other proper principle of things created, begin again from 
 the beginning, even as we began the former inquiry. 
 
 Wherefore let us search out the natures of Fire and 
 
 ^ I have adopted this translatiou of η ττΚανωμένη αιτία from Mr. Archer-Hind. 
 
288 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 T6 καΧ άβρος καί <γης φύσιν θβατέον αντην καϊ τα ττρο 
 τούτου ττάθη. 
 
 69 Β ωστΓβρ ουν καϊ κατ αργα<ζ βΧάχθη, ταύτα ατάκτως β'χοντα 
 6 θβος iv ίκάστω τβ αύτω ττρος αυτό καϊ ττρος αλΧηΧα 
 συμμετρίας βνεττοίησεν, όσας τε καϊ oirrj Βυνατον ην 
 avakoya καϊ σύμμετρα είναί. τότε yap οΰτε τούτων όσον 
 μη τύ'χτ] tl μετεΐ'χεν, οΰτε το τταράτταν ονομάσαι των νυν 
 ονομαζόμενων άξίολο^ον ην ούΒέν, οίον ττΰρ καϊ ΰΒωρ καϊ 
 
 C εϊ τι των αΧλων, άΧλα ττάντα ταύτα ττρωτον Βιεκόσμησεν, 
 εττειτ εκ τούτων ττάν τόΒε ξυνεστήσατο, ζώον εν ζώα ε'χον 
 τα ττάντα εν αύτω θνητά αθάνατα τε, καϊ των μεν θείων 
 αύτος ^ί^νεται Βημιουρ^ός, των Βε θνητών την ηενεσιν τοις 
 εαυτού ^γεννημασί Βημιουριγεΐν ττροσεταξεν. οί Βε μιμούμενοι, 
 τταραΧαβόντες ap^rjv "ψνχής άθάνατον, το μετά τούτο 
 θνητον σώμα αύττ} ττεριετόρνευσαν οχ^ημά τε ττάν το σώμα 
 εΒοσαν αΧλο τε εΙΒος εν αύτω '^υ'χης ττροσωκοΒομουν το 
 θνητον, Βεινα καϊ ava^yKata εν εαυτω τταθηματα ε'χον, 
 
 D Ίτρώτον μεν ήΒονην, μέ<γιστον κακού Βελεαρ, εττειτα Χύττας, 
 άyaθώv φυ'γάς, ετι δ' αύ θάρρος καϊ φόβον, άφρονε 
 ξυμβούΧω, θυμον Βε Βυστταραμύθητον, εΧττίΒα δ' εύ'πapάyω- 
 yov αίσθησει τε άΧο^ω καϊ εττιχειρητ^ τταντος ερωτΐ' 
 ξυ^κερασάμενοί τ αύτα άναηκαίως το θνητον >γενος 
 ξυνεθεσαν. καϊ Βια ταύτα Βη σεβόμενοι μιαίνειν το θείον, 
 6 τι μη ττάσα ην άνά<γκη, χωρίς εκείνου κατοικίζουσιν εις 
 
 Ε αΧΧην τού σώματος οϊκησιν το θνητον, ίσθμον καϊ ορον 
 ΒιοικοΒομήσαντες της τε κεφαΧής καϊ τού στήθους, αυχένα 
 μεταξύ τιθεντες, Ίνα εϊη χωρίς, εν Βη τοις στηθεσι καϊ 
 τω καΧουμενω θώρακι το της Λίτυχής θνητον ^ενος ενεΒουν. 
 καϊ εττειΒη το μεν αμεινον αυτής, το Βε χείρον εττεφύκει, 
 
 70 ΒιοικοΒομούσι τού θώρακος αύ το κύτος, Βιορίζοντες οίον 
 'γυναικών, την Βε άνΒρών χ(ορϊς οϊκησιν, τάς φρενας 
 
THE TIMAEUS 289 
 
 Water and Air and Earth, which were before the Heaven was 
 brought forth ; and also the state which was before these 
 natures themselves were. 
 
 As was said at the beginning, these things, being without 
 order, God took, and put into them all those measures of 
 Proportion and Symmetry whereof they were capable, each 
 one in respect of itself, and all in respect of one another. 
 For before that there was nothing which partook of these 
 measures save by chance ; nor was there any of the things 
 which now have names which was then worthy at all of 
 being named, neither Fire nor Water nor any of the 
 other Elements; but all these did He first set in order, 
 and then out of them instituted this Universe, One Living 
 Creature, which hath in itself all living creatures mortal and 
 immortal. Of those which are divine He himself is the 
 Maker ; but the creation of those which are mortal He 
 appointed unto His own offspring, to be their work ; and they 
 following His example, when they had received of Him the 
 immortal principle of the Soul, thereafter fashioned round 
 about her this mortal Body, and gave it all unto her to be 
 her vehicle ; and, moreover, they constructed another kind of 
 Soul, and put it also into the Body, to wit the Mortal Soul 
 which hath in itself passions terrible, of necessity inherent — 
 first, Pleasure, evil's best bait, then Pains that banish good 
 things, also Confidence and Fear, two heedless counsellors, and 
 Wrath hard to entreat, and Hope easily led astray. These 
 did they mix with Sense that lacketh Eeason, and Love that 
 dareth all, and so builded the mortal kind of Soul. 
 
 Wherefore, fearing to defile the divine more than was 
 inevitable, they appoint a dwelling-place for the mortal apart 
 therefrom, in another region of the body, having built an 
 isthmus and boundary between the Head and the Breast, to 
 wit, the Neck, set between them that they might be separate. 
 In the Breast, then, or what is called the Chest, they enclosed 
 the mortal kind of Soul ; and inasmuch as one part thereof 
 was by nature better, and the other part worse, they also 
 built a wall of partition to divide the vessel of the Chest, as 
 a house is divided into the women's quarters and the men's 
 
 υ 
 
290 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Βίάφρα<γμα βίς το μέσον αυτών τιθέντβ^;. το μβτέ'χ^ον οΰν 
 της "^^υγγις avhpeLa^ καί θνμον, φιΧόνβίκον 6ν, κατωκισαν 
 Ιηηυτέρω της κεφαλής μεταξύ των φρενών τε καΐ αύγενος^ 
 ϊνα του Χό^ου κατήκοον ον /coivfj μετ εκείνου βία το τών 
 ετΓίθυμοών κατε'χοί ^ενος^ οττότ εκ της άκροττόΧεως τω τ 
 ε7Γίτά<γματι καϊ Χό^^ω μηΒαμτ} ττείθεσθαι εκον εθεΧοι. Ύην 
 
 Β δε Βη καρΒίαν αρχήν αμα τών φΧεβών καϊ ττη^γην του 
 ττεριφερομενου κατά ττάντα τα μέΧη σφοΒρώς αίματος εΙς 
 την Βορυφορικην οϊκησιν κατέστησαν. Ινα, οτε ξεσείε το 
 του θυμού μένος, του Χ6<γου τταρα^γ^γείΧαντος, ως τις άΒίκος 
 ττερί αυτά 'γί^νεται ττραξις έξωθεν ή καί τις άττό τών 
 ενΒοθεν ετΓίθυμίών, οξέως Βιά πάντων στενωττών τταν, όσον 
 αίσθητίκον εν τω σώματι, τών τε τταρακεΧεύσεων καϊ άττει- 
 Χών αίσθανομενον ηίηνοιτο εττηκοον καϊ εττοιτο ττάντΎ} καϊ 
 
 C το βεΧτυστον ούτως εν αύτοΐς ττάσιν ήyεμovεΐv εώ. 
 
 D Το Βε Βη σίτων τε καϊ ττοτών εττιθυμητίκον της ψυχής 
 
 καϊ όσων ενΒεοαν Βίά την του σώματος ϊσχεο φύσίν, τούτο 
 
 Ε εΙς τα μεταξύ τών τε φρενών καϊ του ττρος τον ομφαΧον 
 ορού κατωκισαν, οΐον φάτνην εν άτταντι τούτω τω τόττω 
 Tjj του σώματος τροφτ} τεκτηνάμενοί' καϊ κατεΒησαν Βη το 
 τοιούτον ενταύθα ως θρέμμα aypiov, τρεφειν Βε ξυνημμενον 
 avajKaiov, εϊττερ τι μεΧΧοι το θνητον εσεσθαι ^ενος. Χν 
 ουν άει νεμομενον ττρος φάτνη καϊ ο τι ττορρωτάτω τού 
 βουΧευομενου κατοικούν, θόρυβον καϊ βοην ώς εΧαχίστην 
 
 71 τταρεχον, το κράτιστον καθ^ ήσυχίαν πτερϊ τού ττάσι κοινή 
 ξυμφεροντος εω βουΧεύεσθαι, Βιά ταύτα ενταύθ' εΒοσαν 
 αύτω την ταξιν. εΙΒοτες Βε αύτο ώς Χό<γου μεν οΰτε 
 ξυνησειν εμεΧΧεν, εϊ τε ττη καϊ μεταΧαμβάνοι τίνος αυ τών 
 αισθήσεων, ουκ εμφυτον αύτω το μεΧειν τινών εσοιτο 
 Xoyωv, ύτΓΟ Βε ειΒώΧων καϊ φαντασμάτων νυκτός τε καϊ 
 μεθ ήμεραν μαΧιστα 'ψυχα^ω^ήσοιτο, τούτω Βη θεός εττι- 
 βουΧευσας αύτω την τού ήττατος ιΒεαν ξυνέστησε καϊ 
 
THE TIMAEUS 291 
 
 quarters ; so did they put the Midriff as a barrier betwixt these 
 two parts. 
 
 That part of the Soul, therefore, which partaketh of 
 courage and spirit, loving strife, they established nearer unto 
 the Head, betwixt the Midriff and the Neck, to the end that, 
 being within hearing of the Eeasoning Part, it might, to- 
 gether with it, keep down the brood of appetites by force, 
 when they would not obey the word of command from the 
 castle ; and the Heart, which is the knot of the veins and the 
 fountain of the blood which floweth everywhere mightily 
 through all the members, they set to be the guardhouse, so 
 that when the fierceness of wrath boileth, what time Eeason 
 doth pass the word that some wickedness is being done around 
 them without, or haply by the Appetites within, then the 
 whole sensitive system of the Body, keenly apprehending 
 through all the narrow passages thereof the exhortations and 
 threats uttered, should become obedient and tractable alto- 
 gether, and so should let the Best Part be the leader of 
 them all. 
 
 * * -x- -x- -X- -it 
 
 As for that part of the Soul which desireth meat and drink 
 and the other things which it needeth by reason of the nature 
 of the Body, this they established in the region which lieth 
 between the Midriff and the borders of the ^iavel, having 
 framed, as it were, a manger to extend throughout all this 
 place for the nourishment of the Body. Here they bound this 
 part of the Soul like a wild beast which nevertheless must 
 be kept joined unto the rest and reared, if there was to be a 
 mortal race at all. Accordingly, that, always feeding at the 
 manger and dwelling as far as possible from the part which 
 taketh counsel, it might raise as little tumult and uproar as 
 possible, and let the Chief Part take counsel in peace concern- 
 ing the common good, for this cause did they post it here. 
 And knowing this concerning it that it would not be able to 
 understand Eeason, and that even if it attained somehow unto 
 some empiric knowledge of reasonable truths, it was not of 
 such a nature as to give heed thereto, but for the most part 
 would follow the ghostly conduct of Images and Phantasms by 
 night and by day, God sought out a device against this, and 
 put the Liver close by the dwelling-place of the Appetitive 
 
292 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Β ϊθηκεν eU την βκείνον κατοίκησιν, ττυκνον καΐ Χβΐον καΐ 
 Χαμττρον καΐ yXvKv καϊ ττικροτητα €^ον μη'χ^ανησάμενος, 
 ϊνα iv αύτω των διανοημάτων ή €Κ τον νου φβρομβνη 
 Βνναμις, οίον iv κατότττρω Ββχ^ομενω τνττους καϊ κατιΒεΐν 
 εΐ'δωλα ιταρεγοντϋ, φοβοΐ μβν αυτό, οττότε μβρβί της 
 τΓίκροτητος 'χ^ρωμένη ^v^yyevei γαΚεττη Ίτροσενβ'χθβΐσα aireLhrj 
 κατά Ίταν ύττομί^νΰσα οξβως το ήτταρ χολώδτ; 'χ^ρωματα 
 
 C έμψαίνοί, ξυνώ^ουσά τβ τταν ρυσον καϊ τραγυ ττοωΐ, Χοβον 
 Be καϊ δοχά? ττνΧας Τ6 τα μβν έξ ορθόν κατακάμτττονσα 
 καϊ ξνσιτώσα, τα Be ίμφράττονσα avyKXeiovaa re, Χνττας 
 καϊ ασας τταρέ'χ^οί, καϊ 6τ αν τάναντία φάσματα άττο- 
 ζω^ραφοί ττραότητος τις €Κ Βίανοίας έττίττνοια, της μ^ν 
 ΊΓίκρότητος ήσνχ^ίαν τταρέ'χρνσα τω μητ€ KLvelv μητ€ ττροσ- 
 ά7ΓΤ6σθαί της εναντίας eavTjj φνσ€ως eOeXeLV, ^Χνκντητϋ Be 
 Tjj κατ €Κ€Ϊνο ζνμφντω ττρος αντο 'χρωμένη καϊ ττάντα 
 
 D ορθά καϊ Xela αντον καϊ eXevθepa ά7Γ6νθύνονσα 'iXeojv re 
 καϊ evήμepov ττοίοΐ την irepl το ητταρ '^^τνγτις μοΐραν 
 κατωκισμένην, 'iv re τη ννκτϊ Βι,α^ω^γην 'έ'χρνσαν μeτpLav, 
 μavτeίa 'χ^ρωμένην καθ^ νττνον, iTreiBr) Xoyov καϊ φpovησeως 
 ον /Α€Τ€?χ€. μeμvημevo(, yap της τον ττατρος ilnστoXης οΐ 
 ξννιστάντες ήμας, 6τ€ το θνητον εττβστελλε yevoς ώς 
 άριστον eh Βνναμιν iroceiv, οντω Βη κaτopθovvτeς καϊ το 
 
 Ε φανΧον ημών, Ίνα άXηθeίaς ττη ττροσάτττοιτο, κατέστησαν 
 iv τούτω το μavτelov, 
 
 * * Hi He % * 
 
 89 Ε κaθά'πep eϊlΓoμev ττοΧΧάκις, οτυ τρία τρί'χτ} '\^ν'χΎ)ς iv ήμΐν 
 €ΪΒη κατωκίσται, Tvyj^avei Be εκαστον κινήσεις ε'χρν, οντω 
 κατά ταντά καϊ ννν ώς Βιά βραγντάτων ρητέον, οτι το 
 μ^ν αντών iv apyia Biayov και τών εαντον κινήσεων 
 ησνχίαν ayov άσθενεστατον άvάyκη yίyvεσθaι, το δ' iv 
 90 yvμvaσίoις ippωμεvεστaτov' Βιο φνΧακτεον, οττως αν εγωσι 
 τάς κινήσεις ιτρος άΧΧηΧα σνμμετρονς. το Βε ττερί τον 
 κνριωτάτον ιταρ ήμΐν ψνχής εϊΒονς Βιανοεΐσθαι Βεΐ τηΒε, 
 ώς άρα αντο Βαίμονα θεός εκάστω ΒάΒωκε, τοντο ο Βή 
 φαμεν οικεΐν μεν ημών iir άκρω τω σώματι, ττρος Βε την 
 iv ονρανω ξvyyεvειav άττο yης ημάς αϊρειν ώς οντάς φντον 
 ονκ εyyειov, άλλα ονράνιον, ορθότατα Xεyovτες' iκεΐθεv 
 Β yap, όθεν ή ττρώτη της ^^νχτις yεvεσις εφν, το θείον την 
 κεφαΧήν καϊ ρίζαν ημών άνακρεμανννν ορθοί ττάν το σώμα. 
 τω μεν ονν ττερΙ τάς i^Γlθvμίaς η ττερι φιΧονεικίας τετεν- 
 
THE TIMAEUS 293 
 
 Soul, having fashioned it close and smooth and shining and 
 sweet and bitter too, so that the thoughts which come from 
 the Intelligence, striking upon it as upon a mirror which 
 receiveth impressions and causeth images to be seen, might 
 fill the Appetitive Soul, at one time, with fear, ... at 
 another time might make it mild and gentle, and give unto 
 it a space of calm at night, wherein it should receive the 
 Oracles of Dreams, meet for that which is without Eeason and 
 Understanding ; for they who made us were mindful of that 
 which their Father spake, commanding them to make the 
 mortal race as perfect as possible ; therefore did they regulate 
 even the base part of us after this wise, that it might lay 
 hold of truth somehow, and therefore did they establish a 
 Place of Oracles therein. 
 
 Now, as touching the three sorts of Soul implanted in us, 
 whereof we have• oft-times spoken, and the proper motions of 
 each, let this be now said shortly, that any one of them 
 which continueth in abeyance, having her motions stopped, 
 must needs become weaker ; but any one which exerciseth 
 herself becometh stronger. Wherefore we must take heed 
 that they all, in regard to one another, have their motions 
 accomplished in due measure. 
 
 But as touching that kind of Soul in us which hath 
 most authority, let this be understood, that God hath given 
 it unto each man to be his Genius, to wit, that Soul which, 
 we say, dwelleth in the topmost part of the Body, and lifteth 
 us up from Earth towards our birthplace in the Heaven, 
 forasmuch as we are not earthly creatures but heavenly : this 
 we say, and most truly say ; for from that Place whence the 
 Soul first sprang the Divine Principle suspendeth our head 
 and root, and so causeth the whole Body to stand upright. 
 Wherefore if any man have followed after the lusts of the 
 
294 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 τακοτι καΐ ταύτα Βίαττονουντι σφοΒρα ττάντα τα Βό^γματα 
 ανάγκη θνητά iyyejovevaif καΐ τταντάττασί καθ* όσον 
 μάΧιστα Βυνατον θνητω ηίην^σβαι^ τούτον μηΒβ σμικρόν 
 βΧΧβίτΓβιν, ατ6 το τοιούτον ηύξηκότΐ' τω Be irepl φιλομαθίαν 
 και ΊΓβρΙ τας αληθείς φρονησβις εσττουΒακοτί καϊ ταύτα 
 
 C μάλιστα των αυτού ^β^υμνασμενω φρονεΐν μβν αθάνατα και 
 θ€Ϊα, άντΓβρ άΧηθβίας βφάτττηται, ττασα ανάγκη ττου, καθ^ 
 όσον δ' αΰ μβτασχ^εΐν άνθρωττίνη φύσις αθανασίας βνΒί'χεται, 
 τούτου μηΒβν μέρος airoXeiireiVy ατ€ Be ael θεραττεύοντα το 
 θείον εγοντά re αύτον ev κεκοσμημενον τον Βαίμονα 
 ξυνοικον ev αύτω Βιαφεροντως εύΒαίμονα είναι. θεραττεία 
 Βε Βη ΊταντΙ ττάντως μία, τάς οικείας εκάστω τροφας και 
 
 D κινήσεις άττοΒιΒοναι, τω δ' εν ήμΐν θείω ξνγ^ενεΐς εισι 
 κινήσεις αΐ τού τταντος Βιανοησεις και ττεριφοραί. ταύταις 
 Βη ξυνετΓομενον εκαστον Βεΐ, τας ττερι την ^γενεσιν εν ττ} 
 κεφαλή Βιεφθαρμενας ημών ττεριόΒονς εξορθούντα Βιά το 
 καταμανθάνειν τας τού τταντος αρμονίας τε καϊ ιτεριφοράς, 
 τω κατανοουμένω το κατανοούν εξομοιωσαι κατά την 
 άρ'χαιαν φύσιν, ομοιώσαντα Βε τέλος ε'χειν τού ττροτεθεντος 
 άνθρώτΓΟίς ύττο θεών αρίστου βίου ττρός τε τον τταρόντα 
 και τον εττειτα γ^ρόνον. 
 
 Ε ΚαΙ Βη καϊ τα νύν ήμΐν εξ αργ^ης τταραηηελθεντα 
 
 Βιεξελθεΐν ττερϊ τού τταντος μέχρι γενέσεως άνθρωττίνης 
 σ'χεΒον εοικε τέλος ε'χειν. τά yap άλλα ζώα y ^έηονεν 
 αύ, Βιά βραχέων εττιμνηστέον, 6 τι μή τις ανάγκη μηκύνειν 
 ούτω yap εμμετρότερος τις αν αύτω Βόξειε ττερϊ τους 
 τούτων \oyoυς είναι. ttjL•^ ούν το τοιούτον έστω λey6μεvov, 
 Ύών yεvo μένων άνΒρών όσοι Βειλοϊ καϊ τον βίον άΒίκως 
 Βιηλθον, κατά \6yov τον εικότα yυvaΐκες μετεφύοντο εν rf 
 Βευτέρα yεvέσει. 
 
 ****** 
 91 D yυvaΐκες μεν ούν καϊ το θήλυ ττάν οΰτω yέyove. Το Βε 
 
THE TIMAEUS 295 
 
 flesh, or after contention, and busied himself wholly therewith, 
 all his thoughts withior him muet ^ g^s be^prtal, and so farU t 
 as it lie th_jn^(faim_to _ become mortal^ he cannot fail at all of \ 
 this ; for this hath he fostered : but if any man have earnestly 
 pursued learning and the knowledge of Truth, and have 
 exercised most his faculty of thinking, he must needs have 
 thoughts immortal and divine if he lay hold of Truth ; and 
 so far as Human Nature may have part in Immortality, he 
 cannot fall short thereof at all : and inasmuch as he serveth 
 the Divine Part, and hath the Genius which dwelleth in him 
 ordered aright, he must needs be blessed exceedingly : ^ and 
 the service required of every man is the same alway — to wit, 
 he must apportion unto each part the kind of nourishment 
 and motion proper thereto. Now unto the Divine Part in us 
 the motions which are kin are the Thoughts and Circuits of 
 the All. These must every man follow, that he may regulate 
 the Eevolutions in his Head which were disturbed when the 
 Soul was born in the flesh ; and, by throughly learning the 
 Harmonies and Circuits of the All, may make that which 
 understandeth like unto that which is understood, even as it 
 was in the beginning ; and having made it like, may attain 
 unto the perfection of that Best Life which is offered unto 
 men by the Gods, for this present time and for the time 
 hereafter. 
 
 Now is the commandment which came unto us in the 
 beginning, that we should declare the nature of the All, even 
 unto the generation of Man, well-nigh brought to fulfilment ; 
 for the way of the generation of the other living creatures 
 we may tell shortly, if it so be that it needeth no long 
 history. Thus methinks shall a man set proper bounds unto 
 his discourse concerning them. 
 
 Let this, then, be said, that of those which were born 
 Men, it is most likely that as many as were cowardly, and 
 passed their life in unrighteousness, were changed into 
 Women when they were born the second time. 
 
 •K• * * * -x• -x- 
 
 Thus were Women and the whole female sex brought forth. 
 
 1 Cf. Arist. E. N. x. 7. 8. 1177 b 26 ff., and E. E. θ 3. (Η 15) 1249 b 20, where 
 t6v debv depaireveiv και ded^eiv seems to be an echo of the (ire δέ del Oepa- 
 ττεύοντα τό Oeiov, Tim. 90 C. 
 
296 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 των ορνύων φϋΧον μβτβρρνθμίζβτο, άντΙ τρυ'χων ιττβρα ψνον, 
 6Κ των άκακων άνΒρών, κούφων Be, καΐ μβτβωρολο^γίκών 
 
 Ε μβν, ηγουμένων δε hC οψβως τα<ζ ττβρί τούτων άτΓοΒβίξβί^; 
 βββαίοτάτας elvau hC βύηθβίαν. Το δ' αν ττβζον καΐ 
 θηρίώΒβς yeyovev 6Κ των μηΒεν ττροσγ^ρω μίνων φιλοσοφία 
 μηΒβ άθρούντων τήζ πτβρί τον ούρανον φύσεως ττβρί μηΒέν, 
 Βία το μηκίτι ταΐζ iv Tjj κεφαΧτ} γ^ρησθαί ττβρίόΒοις, αΧΧα 
 τοις irepl τα στήθη της 'ψν'χτ}ς ή<γ€μ6σιν βττβσθαί μβρβσυν. 
 6Κ τούτων ονν των βτητηΒβνμάτων τά τβ βμττροσθια κωΚα 
 καΐ* τας κβφαΧας βίς yrjv ίΧκόμβνα νττο ξν^^βνβίας ήρβι,σαν, 
 ττρομήκβίς τ€ καΐ τταντοίας βσ^ον τας κορυφάς, otttj 
 92 συνβθΧίφθησαν νττο άρτιας εκάστων αί ττβριφοραί. τβτρά- 
 ΤΓονν Τ6 το ^ενος αυτών €κ ταύτης βφύετο καΐ ττοΧύττουν 
 της ττροφάσεως, θβοΰ βάσεις υττοτιθεντος ττΧείους τοις 
 μαΧΚον άφροσιν, ώς μαΧΧον εττι yrjv εΧκοιντο. τοις δ* 
 άφρονεστάτοις αυτών τούτων κα\ τταντάττασι ττρος yrjv 
 Ίτάν το σώμα κατατεινομύνοις ώς ούΒεν €τι ττοΒών 'χηρείας 
 ούσης, άττοΒα αυτά και ιΧυσττώμενα εττΐ γης εyεvvησav. το 
 Βε τέταρτον γένος ενυΒρον γεγονεν εκ τών μάΧιστα άνοητο- 
 τάτων καϊ αμαθέστατων, ους ούΒ^ άναττνοής καθαράς ετι 
 ήξίωσαν οι μεταττΧάττοντες, ώς την '>^υγΎ)ν υττο ττΧημμε- 
 Χειας ττάσης άκαθάρτως ε'χοντων, αΚΧ άντΙ Χετττης και 
 καθαράς αναπνοής άερος εις νΒατος θοΧεράν καϊ βαθεΐαν 
 
 Β εωσαν άνάττνευσιν όθεν Ι'χθύων έθνος καϊ το τών οστρεων 
 ξυναττάντων τε οσα ενυΒρα γεγονε, Βίκην άμαθίας εσ'χάτης 
 εσ'χάτας οικήσεις είΧη'χρτων. καϊ κατά ταύτα Βή ττάντα 
 τότε καϊ νυν Βιαμείβεται τά ζώα εις άΧΧηΧα, νου και 
 άνοιας άττοβοΧτ) καϊ κτήσει μεταβαΧΧόμενα. Kat δ^ και 
 τεΧος ττερϊ του τταντος νυν ήΒη τον Xoyov ήμΐν φώμεν 
 εγειν θνητά yap καϊ αθάνατα ζώα Χαβών καϊ ξυμτΓΧηρω- 
 θεϊς οΒε ο κόσμος, οΰτω ζώον ορατον τά ορατά ττεριεγον, 
 εΐκών του ττοιητοΰ, θεός αΙσθητός, μέγιστος καϊ άριστος 
 κάΧΧιστός τε καϊ τεΧεώτατος γεγονεν, εις ουρανός οΒε 
 μονογενής ών. 
 
THE TIMAEUS • 297 
 
 The tribe of Birds, putting forth feathers instead of hair, 
 was the transformation of men that were guileless, but light- 
 witted ; who were observers of the stars, but thought foolishly 
 that the surest knowledge concerning them cometh through 
 Sight. 
 
 The tribe of Beasts which walk on the Earth sprang from 
 those men who sought not "Wisdom at all for an help, nor 
 considered the nature of the Heaven at all, because that they 
 no longer used the Kevolutions in the Head, but followed the 
 Parts of the Soul which are about the Breast, making them 
 their guides. By reason of this manner of living their four 
 limbs and their heads were drawn down unto kindred earth, 
 and thereon did they rest them ; and they got head-pieces of 
 all sorts, oblong, according as the circuits of each, not being 
 kept in use, were crushed in. For this cause their kind grew 
 four-footed and many-footed, for God put more props under 
 those which were more senseless, that they might be drawn 
 the more toward the earth. But the most senseless of them 
 all, which do stretch their whole body altogether upon the 
 earth, since they had no longer any need of feet, the Gods 
 made without feet, to crawl on the earth. 
 
 The fourth kind was born, to live in the water, from 
 those men who were the most lacking in Understanding and 
 Knowledge ; whom they who fashioned them afresh deemed 
 not worthy any more even of pure air to breathe, because that 
 they had made their Souls impure by all manner of wicked- 
 ness: wherefore the Gods gave them not thin pure air to 
 breathe, but thrust them down into the waters, to draw thick 
 breath in the depths thereof. From these men is sprung the 
 nation of Fishes, and of Oysters, and of all that live in the 
 water, which have gotten for recompense of uttermost ignorance 
 the uttermost habitations. 
 
 "k ^ ^ ^ ^ * 
 
 Now may we say that our discourse concerning the All 
 is come to its ending. For this Universe, having taken unto 
 itself Living Creatures mortal and immortal, and having been 
 filled therewith, hath been brought forth a Creature Visible, 
 containing the things which are visible ; the Image of his 
 Maker, a God Sensible, Greatest, Best, Fairest, and Most 
 Perfect — this One Heaven Only Begotten. 
 
298 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Observations on the Timaeus Myth 
 
 It lies outside the scope of this work to select for 
 separate comment even a few of the most important questions 
 and topics contained in the vast Timaeus, related as these 
 are, not only to Plato's Philosophy itself as a whole, but to 
 subsequent Philosophy and Theology and Natural Science as 
 influenced by this Dialogue, perhaps the most influential of 
 all Plato's Dialogues. 
 
 I keep clear of the Timaeus as an Essay on Physics and 
 Physiology profoundly interesting to the student of the 
 history of these branches. 
 
 I do not wish to ransack it for its anticipations of later 
 metaphysical doctrine, such as that of the subjectivity of 
 space, which may, or may not, be taught in the passages 
 treating of χωρά and the ύττοΒοχη. 
 
 I do not trouble myself or my readers with the lucubra- 
 tions of Proclus and his like on it. 
 
 I do not say a word about the theological doctrine which 
 Christian exegesis has found in it in such abundant store. 
 
 For these things the reader must turn to editions of the 
 Timaeus, and Histories of Philosophy where the Timaeus is 
 discussed. 
 
 Here we are concerned with it merely as one in the series 
 of Plato's Myths ; and as most of the observations which 
 have been made in connection with the other Myths already 
 examined apply equally to this Myth, special observations 
 on it need not be numerous or long. Indeed, the transla- 
 tion which I have made, if read in the light of these former 
 observations, almost explains itself. 
 
 More might have been translated, for the whole Discourse 
 delivered by Timaeus is a Myth ; or other parts might have 
 been substituted for some here translated. I had to use my 
 judgment in choosing what to translate, as I could not trans- 
 late the whole, and my judgment may have sometimes erred ; 
 yet, after all, I venture to think that what I have translated 
 presents the Timaeus in the aspect in which it is the object 
 
THE TIMAEUS 299 
 
 of this work to present it — as a great Myth in the series 
 which we are reviewing. 
 
 This Myth sets forth, in one vast composition, the three 
 Ideas of Soul, Cosmos, and God : in one vast composition ; 
 perhaps nowhere else in literature are they set forth so 
 as to produce such a convincing sense of their organic inter- 
 connection. And the impressiveness of this vast composition 
 is wonderfully enhanced by the context in which it is framed. 
 Indeed, what is new in the presentation of the Ideas of Soul, 
 Cosmos, and God in the Timaeus, as compared with other 
 Platonic Myths in which they are presented, is derived from 
 the context in which this Myth frames them. The Timaeus, 
 as we have seen, and shall see better when we reach the 
 Critias, follows on after the BepuUic. It begins with a 
 recapitulation of the first five books of the Republic, which 
 Socrates offers in order that he may say : " Here you have 
 the structure of theEfi£&i^ State set forth ; now let us s^ie^ 
 that State exertin^^^ί?^cί^o^in accordance with its structur^ff^ 
 Its structure is that or~anighly organised military system. 
 Let us see it engaged in a great war." In answer to this 
 demand Critias introduces and outlines the Atlantis Myth 
 (afterwards resumed in the unfinished Dialogue which bears 
 his name), the History of the Great Antediluvian War in 
 which Athens — representing the καΧλίττοΧις of the Repuhlic 
 — maintains the civilisation of Hellas against the outer 
 barbarian. That is the immediate context of the Discourse, 
 or Myth, delivered by Timaeus. But the Myth breaks away 
 from the sequence of that context in the most startling 
 manner, and soars, on a sudden, above the mundane outlook 
 of the first five books of the EepuUic and the History of the 
 Great War, with which the company were up to the moment 
 engaged, and constrains them to give all their thoughts to 
 the world eternal. 
 
 Two things Timaeus seems to tell them in this Myth. 
 
 First, the State must be framed in the Cosmos. You 
 cannot ""Have any scientific knowledge of the Social Good till 
 you understand it as part of the Absolute Good realised in 
 the Cosmos which is the Image of God. The knowledge of 
 the ihea τά^αθου which the EepuUic (in a passage subsequent 
 to the books epitomisea by Socrates in the Timaeus) requires 
 
300 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 of the True Statesman is, indeed, nothing but the appre- 
 hension of the Social Good as determined by the Cosmic 
 Good. The method of the Eepublic was to write the goodness 
 of the Individual large in the goodness of the State. But we 
 must not stop here. The goodness of the State must be 
 written large in that of the Universe : written, not, indeed, 
 in characters which the scientific faculty can at last be sure 
 that it has deciphered, but in the hieroglyphics, as it were, 
 of a mysterious picture-writing which, although it does not 
 further definite knowledge, inspires that Wonder which is the 
 source of Philosophy, that Fear which is the beginning of 
 Wisdom. 
 
 But, secondly, Timaeus goes far beyond the mere recom- 
 mendation of a study of Cosmology for the sake of the better 
 realisation of the political end. He tells the company, in this 
 \Myth, that the political end is not the only end which man 
 I may propose to himself. The life of the State and of Man as 
 member of the State, however it may be ennobled and made 
 to seem more choice-worthy by being viewed as part of the 
 blessed life of the One, Only Begotten, Living Creature which 
 is the express image of God, is nevertheless an end in which 
 it is impossible to acquiesce. The best-ordered State cannot 
 escape the Decline and Fall which await all human institu- 
 tions ; and the life of the citizen is incomparably shorter than 
 that of his earthly city. If Man is to have any abiding end 
 it must be in a life of_the Soul which lies beyond death, 
 outside the κύκλος τή? yev^iretd^} ' 
 
 To be remembered, anfl even tojbe worshipped, by future 
 
 generations on Qarth is an " immortality " which can satisfy 
 
 Ipo manji and fetjUless satis ^Ing~is the " imm ortality t of 
 
 IbSsorption in the Spirit/oTthe Universe^ The~'inly im- 
 
 i^^ .'St ^--r-"=^=Tw• '4^-x: i i. r • 
 
 mortality wJ iicJi can sa tisfy a m an, ii 'he can only believe m 
 
 it, is a personal life after bodily death, or, it may be, after 
 
 many bodily deaths, ^^hen~he shall return to his " native star," 
 
 1 "In Plato the State, like everything else upon Earth, is essentially related 
 to the other world, whence all truth and reality spring. This is the ultimate 
 ource of his political idealism. . . . The State, therefore, serves not only for 
 moral education, but also as a preparation for the higher life of the disembodied 
 spirit into which a beautiful glimpse is opened to us at the end of the Republic " 
 (Zeller, Aristotle, ii. 212, Engl. TransL; cf. Rohde, Psyche, ii. 293). The latter 
 half of the Republic, as has been pointed out, is not before us in the 
 TiTruuus. 
 
THE TIMAEUS 301 
 
 and be there for ever what the grace of God and his own 
 efforts after κάθαρσί<; have made him. 
 
 This third sort of immortality obviously holds the field 
 against the two other sorts mentioned ; for, first, it is worth 
 believing, which the second sort, however easy to believe, is 
 not ; and, secondly, it is more worth believing than the first 
 sort, because it is a true " immortality " — a personal life for 
 ever and ever, — whereas the first sort, consisting in the lapsing 
 memory of the short-lived individuals of a Kace itself destined 
 in time to disappear from the earth, is not a true immortality, 
 however comforting it may be to look forward to it as a brief 
 period in the true immortality. Lastly, the third sort of 
 immortality, being worth believing, is, in addition to that, 
 easy to believe, because no evidence drawn from the Natural 
 World can ever be conclusive against it. It is not like a 
 miracle alleged to have occurred in the Natural World in 
 opposition to the recognised Laws of that World. No objec-l 
 tive Law of Nature is violated by the personal immortalityjl 
 of the disembodied Soul. The evidence against it, as for it,i( 
 is subjective only. Does belief in personal immortality com- 
 fort men ? If it does, they will be found believing — a few, 
 fervently, the majority, perhaps, in passive fashion. 
 
 So far I have tried to express the thought and feeling 
 which seem to be in unison with the note of the Timaeus 
 Myth. But there is another type of thought and feeling, on 
 this great subject, which we cannot ignore, although the 
 Timaeus Myth ignores it entirely. We must rem ember that 
 for the J^iBJEJ^ ^TEpnti pi ro M ia l immorta lity has li ttle or no 
 attraction. Final sleep "^ems to be the ideal for a large 
 portion of the human race. 
 
 It would be foolish, then, to say that belief in personal 
 immortality is at all a subjective necessity. All that we are 
 entitled to say is that, as a matter of fact, this belief has 
 prevailed among the races which hitherto have taken the 
 lead in the world. Whether or no it is bound to remain 
 prevalent it is impossible to say. The overworked and the 
 indolent, in modern Europe, easily acquiesce in — nay, gladly 
 embrace, the ideal of eternal sleep ; and even for some 
 energetic constructive minds the time comes when they 
 simply wish to rest from their labours, contented to think, 
 
302 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 or hope, that the mundane system, political, industrial, or 
 scientific, for which they have worked hard, will continue 
 to prosper when they are gone. The ideal of work or duty 
 done is the ideal which, in the West, now competes most 
 seriously with the ideal of personal immortality : — 
 
 ώ ^€tv' άγγελλίΐν Αακ^Βαιμονίους otl TySe 
 κί'ιμ^θα TOiS k€lv(uv ρήμαχτι π€ΐθ6μ,€νοι. 
 
 II 
 
 (Timaeus, 42, and 91 D ff.) 
 
 The lower animals were created after (1) man, and (2) 
 woman, to embody the Souls of human beings who had lived 
 unrighteously. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere in Plato, — in the Phaedrus Myth ; in. 
 the Myth of Er ; in Fhaedo, 81, 82; in Laws, ix. 872 E, — 
 the raison d'Stre of metempsychosis is κόΧασος and κάθαρσις, 
 Correction and Punfijsation — its raison d*Stre also in the 
 Orphic teaching and in Buddhism. But we must not suppose 
 that belief in metempsychosis is necessarily associated with 
 the notions of κόΧασις and κάθαρσος. Metempsychosis 
 recommended itself to the imagination of man as Natural 
 History long before it was used for an ethical purpose.^ The 
 notion that there is a fixed number of souls always in exist- 
 ence — perhaps a fixed number of bodies — and that all the 
 people successively born on earth are dead people who return 
 from the place of spirits or from their graves, by some law 
 of nature in the presence of which sexual intercourse has 
 quite a subordinate place, is a notion which prevails widely 
 among primitive races, and is entertained merely as an item 
 of Natural History — as a theory of generation, and has no 
 ethical import. 
 
 Now it seems to me that the difference between men and 
 beasts which belief in metempsychosis as process of κοΧασι^ 
 and καθάρσια makes little of, is one which belief in metem- 
 psychosis as mode of generation is bound to regard as very 
 
 ^ The ideas of retribution and purification seem to be entirely absent from 
 Irish transmigration stories : see The Voyage of Bran, by Myer and Nutt, 
 ii. 96. 
 
THE TIMAEUS 303 
 
 real. It may conduce to the κάθαρσις of a man's Soul that 
 it should be incarnate afterwards in the body of a lion or 
 a swan ; but if mere generation is all that is effected by 
 metempsychosis it is natural to suppose that the Souls 
 re-incarnated in one generation of men are those which 
 appeared on earth in a former generation of men, and will 
 reappear in some future generation of men. ^Where a beast 
 becomes a man or a man a beast, and the change is not con- 
 ceived as promoting κάθαρσί^, we have something exceptional — 
 not a case of the normal metempsychosis by which the human 
 race is propagated, but rather a case of metamorphosis due to 
 some particular act of magic, like Circe's, or some other 
 extraordinary cause like that which changed the daughters 
 of Pandion, one into a nightingale, and the other into a 
 swallow. The notion of a man's being able to transform 
 himself or another man into a beast by magic is as primitive 
 and as deeply rooted as that of metempsychosis, but in itself 
 has nothing in common with the notion of metempsychosis. 
 
 I would therefore distinguish sharply between belief in 
 the reappearance, in human bodies, of departed human souls — 
 or perhaps I ought to say the reappearance of departed human 
 beings. Soul and Body not being regarded as separate entities 
 — the normal generative process by which the human race 
 is maintained on earth, and belief in the sudden bodily trans- 
 formation, by magic or other cause, of men into beasts and 
 beasts into men — an exceptional occurrence. 
 
 Having distinguished two beliefs which I think ought to 
 be distinguished, I am ready to admit considerable "con- 
 tamination " of each by the other, even before the advent of 
 the notion of κάθαρσις as an end served by re-incarnation of 
 human Souls, not only in human bodies, but also in the bodies 
 of beasts. 
 
 "We see how natural it is that such " contamination " 
 should take place, if we consider the mental condition which 
 expresses itself in the Beast-Fable. It is a state of chronic 
 dream-consciousness. The Beast-Fable is a dream in which 
 men and beasts talk and act together ; in which the trans- 
 formation of a man into a beast, or a beast into a man, is 
 taken as a matter of course ; in which beasts, in short, are 
 at once men and beasts. • 
 
304 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 The mental condition which expresses itself in the dream 
 of the Beast-Fable easily lends itself to belief in bodily trans- 
 formations of men into beasts, and beasts into men, effected 
 supernaturally by magicians ; or sometimes taking place 
 naturally, so that one who was a man in a former generation 
 is born again in this generation as a beast, and may reappear 
 in a future generation as a man. Here the originally in- 
 dependent notions of metempsychosis and metamorphosis 
 begin to " contaminate " each other. Metamorphosis, which 
 is properly the supernatural bodily transformation of a man 
 into a beast, or a beast into a man, appears as the re-birth, 
 in due natural course, of a beast as a man, or a man as a 
 beast : metamorphosis has insinuated itself into the place 
 occupied by metempsychosis, and has become a sort of metem- 
 psychosis ; while metempsychosis, originally a kind of re-birth 
 of departed human beings as human beings, now includes the 
 notion of departed human beings reappearing in new births 
 as beasts, and of beasts as human beings.^ 
 
 As soon as the notions of retribution and purification 
 came to be connected with the notion of metempsychosis, the 
 modification produced in that notion by the notion of magical 
 metamorphosis would be greatly accentuated : to be born 
 again as a beast would in many cases seem to be more 
 appropriate, from the point of view of retribution and purifica- 
 tion, than to be born again in the natural course as a 
 human being. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Timaeus, 41 D, ξυστησας το ττάν Βίβΐλβ ψνγ^ας Ισαρίθ- 
 μους τοις άστροίς, evetp^e θ^ ίκάστην ττρος βκαστον. 
 
 Susemihl {Genet. Entw. ii. 369) and Archer-Hind {Tim. 
 ad loc.) think that the Creator assigned to the fixed stars, not 
 already differentiated individual Souls, but masses of the, as 
 yet, undifferentiated Soul-stuff which he had compounded in 
 the bowl. Only when the time came that Souls should be 
 
 1 The case of Tuan Mac Cairill, in Irish legend, may be quoted as illustrating 
 the manner in which the ideas of metamorphosis, metempsychosis, and preg- 
 nancy without male intervention, run into one another. Tuan became, in 
 succession, a Stag, a Bear, an Eagle, and a Salmon. The Salmon was boiled and 
 eaten by a woman, who thereupon conceived, and brought forth Tuan again in 
 human form. See The Voyage of Bran, by Myer and Nutt, ii. 76. 
 
THE TIMAEUS 305 
 
 " sown " on the ορηανα γ^ρονου, the planets and earth, were 
 these masses of Soul-stuif in the fixed stars taken and differen- 
 tiated into individual Souls. I agree with Zeller {Plato, 
 pp. 390, 391, Engl. Transl.) in holding that the Souls are 
 differentiated as individuals when they are assigned each one 
 to its fixed star ; and that it is these individual Souls which, 
 on the completion of their speculative journey round the outer 
 sphere of the Heaven, are transferred to the earth and planets 
 in order to partake of their first birth, <yeveai,<; ττρώτη, in the 
 flesh. 
 
 Mr. Archer-Hind asks (note, ad loc.) what is the purpose 
 of this distribution of (as he supposes) masses of undifferen- 
 tiated Soul-stuff among the fixed stars ; and finds the explana- 
 tion in Phaedrus, 252 c, D, where different gods are assigned 
 as patrons for persons of various temperament. If the reader 
 will turn to the passage in the Phaedrus referred to by Mr. 
 Archer-Hind, he will find that the patron gods, i.e. stars, are 
 not the fixed stars, but the planets, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun ; 
 and this is only in accordance with the prevailing belief — that 
 it is from the planets that the varieties of temperament are, 
 at least, chiefly derived. The purpose of the distribution of 
 Souls (in my view, individual Souls, not masses of Soul-stuff) 
 among the fixed stars is what Plato distinctly says it is — that 
 these Souls may learn the Laws of the Universe — την του 
 παντού φύσιν. 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 
 
 Context 
 
 The subject of the Phaedrus is " Rhetoric and Love'' 
 
 Socrates and the young Phaedrus take a walk together out- 
 side the Walls, and rest under a jplane-tree hy the hank of the 
 Ilissus. 
 
 There Phaedrus reads to Socrates a rhetorical piece, which 
 he has just heard delivered hy Lysias, in praise of the non- 
 lover as distinguished from the lover. 
 
 Socrates does not think mu^h of the performance, and 
 delivers a letter speech on the same subject — in dispraise of the 
 lover and praise of the non-lover. 
 
 When he has finished his speech, he rises to go away, but 
 is stopped by his Βαιμόνων, or Familiar Spirit, and stays to 
 deliver a Recantation of his blasphemous dispraise of Love. 
 
 The sanity of the non-lover, on which he had enlarged, 
 is indeed a paltry thing, he now says, as compared with the 
 madness of the lover. Madness is the gift of God. There 
 are four kinds of divine madness : the first is prophetic 
 inspiration — as the name μαντική, derived from μανική, 
 shows ; the second is religious exaltation — the feeling of 
 the μύστης, or initiated person; the third is poetic genius; 
 and the fourth is the Love by which the immortal Soul is 
 winged for her fiight to Heaven. 
 
 The Myth describes the birth and growth of this Love, 
 which it presents as the nisus of the Soul after the True, 
 the Beautiful, and the Good — in one word, as Philosophy. 
 
 306 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 307 
 
 When the Myth is finished, conversation is resumed, and 
 returns to the subject of Rhetoric, or the Art of FuUic Speaking, 
 which is now discussed by Socrates with a deep sense of the 
 importance of Truth. To be a really good speaker, a man must 
 know the Truth, and be able to recommend it to his audience. 
 Genuine Rhetoric is based on Philosophy ; and the highest kind 
 of such Rhetoric, on that enthusiastic Philosophy which is the 
 gift of Eros. Let Lysias keep this in mind. 
 
308 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Phaedrus, 246 A-257A 
 
 246 He/jl μλν ουν αθανασίας αυτής ίκανώ<;, 
 
 TLepl δε της ISea^ αυτής ώδε Χβκτύον οίον μέν έστι, 
 
 ττάντΎ) πάντως' θβίας elvai καΐ μακράς Βίηγησεως, ω δε 
 
 €θί,κ€ν, άνθρωττίνης τε καΐ βλάττονος, ταύττ] ουν λεγω/^εν. 
 
 ^Έιοίκίτω Βη ξυμφύτω Βυνάμβί ύττοτΓτέρου ζζύ^ους τε καϊ 
 
 ήνιό'χου. θεών μβν ουν Ϊτγτγοι, τε καϊ ήνίογοί ττάντβς αυτοί 
 
 Β τε α/γαθοϊ καϊ βξ ayaOcjv, το Be των άλλων μβμίκται. καϊ 
 
 ττρώτον μεν ημών 6 άρ'χων ξυνωρίΒος ήνίΟ'χεΙ, βίτα τών 
 
 ϊτΓΤτων 6 μεν αυτω καλός τε κάyaθoς καϊ εκ τοιούτων, 6 
 
 δε εξ εναντίων τε καϊ ενάντιος, γαλεττη Βη καϊ Βύσκολος 
 
 εξ άνάηκης ή ττερϊ ήμας ήνιόγΎ]σις, ΥΙη Βη ουν θνητόν τε 
 
 καϊ άθάνατον ζώον εκλήθη, ιτειρατεον είττεΐν, ττάσα ή 
 
 ψ^χν τταντος εττιμελεΐται, του άψύ'χ^ου, ττάντα δε ούρανον 
 
 περιττολεΐ, αλλοτ εν αΧλοι,ς εϊΒεσι ^ί^νομενη. τελεα μεν 
 
 C ουν ούσα καϊ ετττερωμενη μετεωροττορεΐ τε καϊ ττάντα τον 
 
 κόσμον ΒίοικεΙ' ή δε πτερορρυησασα φέρεται, εως αν 
 
 στέρεου τίνος άντιλάβηται, ου κατοικισθεΐσα, σώμα yrj'ivov 
 
 λαβουσα, αυτό αυτό Βοκουν κινείν Βια την εκείνης Βύναμιν, 
 
 ζώον το ξύμτταν εκλήθη, 'ψυ'χτ) καϊ σώμα Trayiv, θνητόν τ 
 
 εσγεν εττωνυμίαν άθάνατον Βε ούΒ* εξ ενός λόγγου λελoyι- 
 
 σμενου, αλλά ττλάττομεν, οΰτε ΙΒόντες οΰθ* ίκανώς νοήσαντες 
 
 D [^εοι/] άθάνατον τι ζώον, ε'χρν μεν ψυ-χ^ν, εγρν δε σώμα, 
 
 τον άεϊ Βε γ^ρονον ταΰτα ξυμττεφυκότα. Άλλα ταύτα μεν 
 
 Βη, Οίτη τω θεω φίλον, ταύττ) εγετω τε καϊ λε^εσθω, την 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 309 
 
 Translation 
 
 Concerning the Immortality of the Soul enough hath been 
 spoken : now let it be told of what fashion she is, with 
 this preface, to wit, that her fashion, as it truly is, only the 
 tongue of a God, using long discourse, could declare ; hut 
 what she is like unto, a Man may tell, speaking more shortly. 
 
 Let it then be said of the Soul, that she is like unto a 
 Power composite of two Winged Horses harnessed, and a 
 Charioteer. 
 
 All the Horses and Charioteers of the Gods are themselves 
 good, and of good stock ; but of the other Souls the goodness 
 is mixed: for 'tis a Yoke of Horses that the Charioteer 
 of Man's Soul driveth, and, moreover, of his Horses the one 
 is well-favoured and good, and of good stock, the other of 
 evil stock and himself evil. Wherefore a hard thing, a 
 a contrarious, the driving of our Cha4:iots must Jigftds be 
 
 Now let it be told how i t ham^come to passfthat ^ JiXJ^If 
 creatures ^ me^^e called morta l] and \ some immort M| All^ 
 that is called by tke name of ^o^^Z watbheth over all that is | 
 without Soul, and maketh circuit of the whole Heaven, and 
 appeareth now in this shape now in that. If a Soul be per- 
 fect, and keep her wings full of feathers, she flieth high and 
 encompasseth the whole world with her government. But 
 there be Souls, that have shed their wings, and fall down 
 headlong till they lay hold on that which is corporeal, and there 
 they make their abode, having taken unto themselves earthly 
 bodies. The earthly body, albeit without the power of the 
 Soul it is not moved, seemeth to move itself; and the whole, 
 compacted together of Soul and Body, is that which we call 
 by the name of " living creature," thereunto adding " mortal" 
 
 Of that which is " immortal " we have no understanding ; 
 but make for ourselves an image thereof; and God, whom we 
 have not seen neither have rightly comprehended, we conceit 
 as One who liveth and is immortal and hath Soul and 
 Body ; and in him we say are these two joined together for 
 evermore. • 
 
 Let these things and the telling of them be as it pleaseth 
 
310 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 δ αΐτίαν της των τττβρών άττοβοΧής, Βι ην ψνχτ}<ζ airoppel, 
 Χάβωμβν. βστι Be τις TocaBe. 
 
 ΤΙέφνκεν η ΊΓτβρον Βνναμί<ζ το έμβριθβ^; dyeiv άνω 
 μβτβωρίζουσα, y το των θβών yevo^ οίκβΐ. κβκουνώνηκβ Be 
 7Γ7) μάΧίστα των irepl το σώμα τον OeLov \_'^νχη\. το Be 
 
 Ε Oelov κάλον, σοφόν, ayaObv καΐ τταν 6 τί τοιούτον, τούτοις 
 Βη τρέψ€ταί re καΐ ανξ€ται μάΧιστα το της ψνχ7]ς 
 ΤΓτάρωμα, αίσ'χ^ρω Be και κακω και τοις έναντίοις φθίν€ΐ τε 
 και ΒιοΧΧνταΐ' 6 μίν Βη μeyaς ήyeμωv ev ούρανω 7^eυς 
 ^Χάννων τττηνον άρμα ττρωτος iropeveTai, Βιακοσμών ττάντα 
 και €'Π^ιμeXoύμevoς^ τω δ* eireTai στρατιά deSyv re κα\ 
 247 Βαιμονων κατά evBeKa μέρη Κ€κοσμημ€νη. μίν€ΐ yap Έστ^α 
 ev Oeiuv οίκω μονή* των Be άΧΧων όσοι ev τω των BώBeκa 
 αριθμώ τeτayμevoι Oeoi άpγovτeς rjyovvTai κατά τάξιν ην 
 €καστος ίτά'χθη. iroXXal μ€ν ονν καΐ μακάριαι θίαι τ€ κα\ 
 ΒιάξοΒοι έντος ουρανού, ας Oefav yevoς evBaιμ6vωv €7Γΐστρ€- 
 φeτaι, Ίτραττων €καστος αυτών το αυτού. eireTai Be 6 ae\ 
 ε^ελωι/ re καϊ Βυνάμ€νος' φθόνος yap 'έζω θeίoυ χορού 
 ϊσταται. όταν Be Βη ττρος Βαΐτα καϊ εττΐ θοίνην ϊωσιν, 
 
 Β άκραν ύτΓΟ την ύττονράνιον άψιΒα iropeijovTai ττρος άvavτeς 
 ήΒη. τά μίν ουν θeώv οχήματα ισορρόττως eorjvia οντά 
 ραΒίως 7Γορ€ύ€ται, τά Be άΧΧα μ6yις' βpίθeι yap 6 της 
 κάκης ΧιΤΊΤος μeτeχωv, eirl την yrjv ρίπτων τε καϊ βαρύνων, 
 ω μή καΧώς η τeθpaμμevoς τών ηνιόχων. €νθα Βη Ίτόνος 
 Τ€ καϊ aycov €σχατος ψυχτ} TTpOKeiTai. αί μ€ν yap 
 
 C αθάνατοι κaXoύμevaly ήνίκ άν ττρος άκρω yevωvτaί, 'έξω 
 7Γopeυθeΐσaι έστησαν έττι τω τού ουρανού νώτω, στάσας Be 
 αύτάς Trepiayei ή 7Γ€ριφορά, αΐ Be θeωpoύσι τά έξω τού 
 ουρανού. 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 311 
 
 God ; but of the falling off of the wings, and wherefore the 
 Soul sheddeth them, let the cause be now discovered. It is 
 after this wise. 
 
 The nature of wings consisteth in the power of lifting that 
 which is heavy up into the height where the generation of the 
 Gods dwelleth ; and unto wings, amongst the bodily parts, 
 belongeth the largest portion of that which is of God. Now 
 that which is of God hath beauty, and wisdom, and goodness, 
 and all perfection ; by these, therefore, the growth of the 
 wings of the Soul is chiefly nourished and increased ; whereas 
 by the things which are contrary to these, to wit, by all things 
 hateful and evil, are her wings caused to pine away, and utterly 
 destroyed. 
 
 Zeus, the great Captain of the Host of Heaven, mounted 
 upon his winged chariot, rideth first and disposeth and over- 
 seeth all things. Him foUoweth the army of Gods and Daemons 
 in eleven orders — for Hestia alone abideth in the House of 
 the Gods; but all the other Gods which are of the number 
 of the Twelve go forth and lead each one the order whereof 
 he is appointed to be captain. 
 
 Many holy sights there be for eye to behold of blessed 
 Gods in their courses passing to and fro within the firmament 
 of Heaven, each one doing his own business : and whosoever 
 willeth, and is able, foUoweth ; for Envy standeth afar from 
 the Heavenly Choir. 
 
 Now, as often as they go to eat at the banquet, their path 
 is ever up by the steep way close under the roof of the Heaven. 
 The Chariots of the Gods, going evenly and being alway 
 obedient to the hand of the Charioteer, accomplish their 
 journey easily; but the other Chariots hardly, with great 
 labour, for the Horse which is by nature froward is as a weight, 
 and ever inclineth towards the Earth, and, except the Charioteer 
 hath brought him into subjection, draweth the Chariot down. 
 Herein standeth the cause to the Soul of trouble and trial 
 exceeding great and sore which are prepared for her. 
 
 The Souls which are called iinmortal, when they are come 
 to the top of the Heaven, journey out therefrom and stand 
 upon the Eoof thereof without, and standing are carried round 
 by the circuit, and behqjd those things which are without the 
 Heaven. 
 
312 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Τον Be υτΓβρουράνιον τόττον οΰτ€ Τί? ύμνησε ττω των 
 TfjO€ ΊΓΟίητης ούτε ττοσ υμνήσει, κατ αξιαν. e^et oe ωθ€. 
 τοΚμητεον yap ονν το ηε αληθές είττεΐν, άΧλως τε καν 
 ττερί άΧηθείας XiyovTa. ή yap ά'χρώματός τε καΐ ασχημά- 
 τιστος κα\ άναφης ουσία όντως ούσα ψνχης κυβερνήτη 
 μόνω θεατή νω' ττερΙ ην το της αληθούς εττιστημης yεvoς 
 
 D τούτον έχει τον τόττον, άτ οΰν θεού Βιάνοια νω τε καΐ 
 ετηστήμτ] άκηράτω τρεφόμενη, καϊ άττάσης ψυχής, οση αν 
 μεΧλη το ττροσήκον Βεξασθαι, ΙΒούσα Βία χρόνου το ον 
 ayaira τε και θεωρούσα τ αληθή τρέφεται και ευτταθεΐ, εως 
 αν κύκλω ή ττεριφορα εις ταύτον 7Γεpιεvεyκr|. εν Βε ttj 
 ττεριοΒω καθορα μεν αύτην Βικαιοσύνην, καθορα Βε σωφρο- 
 σννην, καθορα Βε εττιστήμην, ούχ ij yεvεσις ττρόσεστιν, ούΒ^ 
 
 Ε ή εστί ΤΓου έτερα εν ετερω ούσα ων ημείς νύν όντων 
 καλούμεν, άλλα την εν τω ο εστίν ον όντως εττιστήμην 
 ούσαν καϊ ταλΧα ωσαύτως τα οντά όντως θεασαμενη και 
 εστιαθεΐσα, Βύσα ττάΧιν εις το είσω τού ουρανού, οϊκαΒε 
 ηΧθεν ελθουσης Βε αυτής ο ηνίοχος ττρος την φάτνην 
 τους ΐττττους στήσας τταρεβαΧεν άμβροσίαν τε και εττ αύττ} 
 νέκταρ εττότισε, 
 248 ΚαΙ ούτος μεν θέων βίος. αΐ Βε άΧΧαι ψυχαί, ή μεν 
 
 άριστα θεω εττομενη καϊ είκασμενη ύττερήρεν εις τον εξω 
 τόττον την τού ηνίοχου κεφαλήν, καϊ συμττεριηνεχθη την 
 ττεριφοράν, θορυβουμενη ύττο των ϊττττων καϊ μόyις καθορωσα 
 τα οντά' η Βε τότε μεν ήρε, τότε Βε εΒυ, βιαζομενων Βε 
 των ϊττττων τα μεν ειΒε, τα δ' ου. αϊ Βε Βή αλΧαι 
 yXιχoμεvaι μεν αττασαι τού άνω εττονται, άΒυνατούσαι Βε 
 ύττοβρύχιαι ξυμττεριφερονται, ττατούσαι άλλ?;λα9 και εττι- 
 
 Β βάλΧουσαι, έτερα ττρο τής ετέρας ττειρωμένη yεviσθaι. 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 
 
 313 
 
 Now, the Place which is above the Heaven no poet here 
 hath ever praised, nor shall praise, worthily. The Place is 
 after this wise : for he especially whose discourse is concerning 
 Truth must make bold to say what is true concerning it. 
 
 P'he Substanc e which Yeril^ ^Is) which hath no colour and 
 no shape, and hand cannot touch, is comprehend e d^n ly by the 
 Governor of the Soul, to wit, by J[Eeason) , Epui^d ab out this 
 Substance, i n this P lace, pwelleth True Know ledge.] The Mind 
 of God — yea, that Part wherewith every Soul seeketh after 
 t .hft fon^ ^.onvepiei^ t for herself — is fed with Keason and True 
 ]nowledge\unde file(^ Wherefore beholding again at last Tha t 
 ^hich^^it is satisfied, and the sight of That which is True 
 feedeth it, and maketh it glad, until the circuit shall have 
 brought the Soul round again unto the same Place. In the, 
 journey round the Soul beholdeth Justice Itself, she beholdetn 
 Temperance Itself, she behglj^ Tme Knowledge : T not that 
 knowledge ^hich i s with fige ne^ionJ and differeth in respect 
 unto different of those things concerning which we now say 
 that " they are " ; but the knowledge which standeth in That 
 which Verily Is. The Soul, then, having beheld these and 
 also all other things Which Verily Are, and having eaten 
 of this feast, sinketh down again into the inward part of the 
 Heaven and cometh home unto her House. And when she 
 is come, the Charioteer maketh the Horses to stand at the 
 manger, and casteth ambrosia before them, and thereafter 
 giveth them nectar to drink. 
 
 This is the life of the Gods, j Of the other Souls, which- 
 soever foUoweth God best, and is made most like unto Him, 
 keepeth the head of her Charioteer lifted up into the Place 
 without the firmapaent, and is carried round with the circuit 
 thereof, being troubled by the Horses, and hardly beholding 
 the Things Which Are ; after her cometh the Soul which for 
 a space keepeth the head of her Charioteer lifted up, and then 
 again sinketh down, and because of the violence of the Horses, 
 seeth some of the Things Which Are, but some she seeth not. 
 Beside these there follow other Souls which all do strive 
 after that which is above, but are not able to reach unto it, 
 and are carried round sunken beneath the face of the Heaven, 
 trampling upon one another, and running against one another, 
 and pressing on for to outstrip one another, with mighty great 
 
314 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 θόρυβος ουν κα\ άμιΚΧα καΐ ΙΒρως βσ'χατος yiyverai. ου 
 Βη κακία ηνιογων ττοΧλαϊ μβν χ^ωλβνονται, ττοΧΧ,αϊ Be 
 τΓολλα τΓΤβρά θραύονται• ττασαί δε ττοΧύν βγρυσαι, ττόνον 
 ατ€λ6ΐ<ζ της του οντος θύας άττεργονταί, καί άττβΧθοΰσαί 
 τοφρτ} Βοξασττ} γ^ρωνταί. ου δ* eVe^* ή ττοΧΧη σττουΒη το 
 αΧηθειας ΙΒβΐν ττβΒίον ου βστίν, ή τ€ Βη ττροσήκουσα Λ^υχή? 
 τω αριστω νομή €Κ του βκβΐ Χειμώνος τυγχ^άνβί ούσα, η re 
 
 C του τΓΤβρου φύσις, φ ψυχ^η κουφίζβται, τούτω τρεφβται, 
 θβσμος re ^ΑΒραστβίας οδβ, ήτις αν "^υγΎ) θβω ξυνοτταΒος 
 Ύβνομβνη KaTiBrj τί των άΧηθών, μ^χρί Τ€ της βτβρας 
 ΤΓβρίοΒου elvai άττημονα, καν ael τούτο Βύνηται ττοίβΐν, del 
 άβΧαβή elvaf όταν Be άΒυνατησασα έτησττάσθαί μη iBy, 
 καί Tivt συντυχία χρησαμίνη Χηθης Te καΐ κακίας ττΧη- 
 σθeΐσa βαρυνθτ}, βαρυνθ€Ϊσα Be τττ€ρορρυηση Τ€ καΐ iirl την 
 
 D yrjv 7Γeσr), TOTe νόμος ταύτην μη φυτeΰσaι, eh μηΒ€μίαν 
 θηpeίav φύσιν ev τη ττρώτη yeveσeι, άΧΧα την μ^ν 7ΓXeΐστa 
 ΙΒουσαν eh yovrjv άνΒρος ^€νησομίνου φιΧοσόφου ή 
 φιΧοκαΧου η μουσικού τίνος και ερωτικού, την Be Beυτepav 
 eις βασιΧ€ως έννομου η 7ΓoXeμικoΰ και αρχικού, τρίτην eh 
 ΊΓοΧιτικού ή τίνος οικονομικού ή χρηματιστικού, τeτάpτηv 
 eh φιΧοίΓονου γυμναστικού ή irepi σώματος ϊασίν τίνα 
 €σομ€νου, ττίμιττην μαντικον βίον η τίνα τeXeστικ6v 
 
 Ε βξουσαν €κτη ποιητικός η των Trepl μ'ιμησίν τις άΧΧος 
 άpμoσeι, έβΒομη Βημιουρ^ικος ή yeωpyικ6ς, oyBorj σοφι- 
 στικός ή ΒημοκοτΓίκος, €ννάτη τυραννικός. ev Be τούτοις 
 αττασιν ος μίν αν Βικαίως Biayayp, άμeίvovoς μοίρας μeτa- 
 Xaμβάveι, ος δ' αν άΒίκως, χ€ίρονος. 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 315 
 
 sound of tumult and sweat of the race ; and here, by reason 
 of the unskilfulness of the Charioteers, many Souls are maimed, 
 and many have their wings broken ; and all, greatly travailing, 
 depart uninitiated, not having seen That Which Is, and turn 
 them to the food of Opinion. 
 
 Now these are the causes wherefore they so vehemently 
 desire to see the Place where the Plain of Truth is : because 
 the pasture convenient for the Best Part of the Soul groweth 
 in the Meadow there, and the power of wings, whereby the 
 Soul is lightly carried up, is nourished by that pasture ; and 
 because Adrasteia hath made a decree that the Soul which 
 hath been the companion of God, and seen some of the Things 
 AVhich Are, shall be without affliction all the time until another 
 journey round the Heaven beginneth for her ; and if she can 
 alway behold Those Things she shall be without hurt alway: 
 but when a Soul, having seen Those Things aforetime, is now 
 not able to follow, and seeth them not, being overtaken by 
 some evil chance, and filled with forgetfulness and wickedness, 
 and made h§ayy so that she _8heddeth the feathers of her 
 wings and(Jalleth unto the Earth, then the law is that she 
 shall not be planted in the body of any Beast in the first 
 generation : but the Soul which hath seen most shall pass into 
 the seed of a man who shall become a Seeker after the True 
 Wisdom, a Seeker after the True Beauty, a Friend of the 
 Muses, a True Lover ; the Soul which cometh second shall 
 enter into the^^ra)of a King who shall rule justly, or of a 
 Warrior and Commander of the Host ; the Soul which cometh 
 third shall enter into the seed of a man who shall busy him- 
 self with the affairs of a City, or with the stewardship of a 
 household, or with merchandise ; the Soul which is fourth 
 shall enter into the seed of a man who shall endure hardness 
 for the sake of the crown of victory, or shall be a healer of 
 the diseases of the body ; the Soul which is fifth shall have 
 the life of a Prophet or Priest ; unto the sixth shall belong 
 the life of a Poet or some other of the tribe of Copiers ; unto 
 the seventh the life of a Workman or Husbandman ; unto the 
 eighth the life of a Sophist or Demagogue ; unto the ninth 
 the life of a Tyrant. In all these lives, whosoever walketh 
 righteously hath a belter portion ; whosoever walketh un- 
 righteously, a worse. 
 
316 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Et9 μΊν yap το αυτό, όθεν ηκβί η ψνχτ) εκάστη, ουκ 
 άφίκνβΐταί €τών μυρίων ου yap τττεροΰται, ττρο τοσούτου 
 249 'χ^ρόνου, ττλην η του φίΧοσοφήσαντος αδολω? ή τταώεραστη- 
 σαντος μβτα φιλοσοφία^;. αύται he τρίτχι ττεριό^ω ttj 
 γ^ίΧιετεΐ, iav ελωνται τρΙς εφεξής τον βίον τούτον^ οΰτω 
 ΤΓτερωθεΐσαί τρισχ^ίλίοστω ετει άττερ'χονταί. αϊ Βε άΧλαι, 
 όταν τον ττρώτον βίον τεΧευτησωσι, κρίσεως ετυγον. 
 κριθεΐσαι Βε αϊ μεν εΙς τα ύττο yrj<; Βικαιωτηρία εΚθουσαι 
 Βίκην εκτίνουσιν, αΐ δ' eh τούρανοΰ τίνα τόττον ύττο της 
 Β Βίκης κουφυσθεΐσαι BίάyoυσL•v άξίως ου εν άνθρώττου εϊΒει 
 εβίωσαν βίου. τω Be χ^ιΧι,οστω άμφότεραι άφι,κνούμεναι 
 €7γΙ κΧηρωσίν τε καΐ αϊρεσιν του Βευτερου βίου αίρουνται 
 ον αν εθεΚτ) εκάστη. ένθα καΐ εΙς θηρίου βίον άνθρωττίνη 
 ψυχ^ άφίκνείται, καΐ εκ θηρίου ος ττοτε άνθρωττος ην 
 ττάΧον εΙς άνθρωτΓον. ου yap η yε μηττοτε ΙΒουσα την 
 αΚηθειαν εις τοΒε ηξει το σγΎ)μα. Βεΐ yap άνθρωττον 
 ξυνιεναι κατ εΙΒος \εyόμεvov, εκ ττοΧλων Ιον αισθήσεων εΙς 
 C €V Xoyισμω ξυναιρούμενον. τούτο Βε εστίν άνάμνησις 
 εκείνων, ά ττοτ εϊΒεν ημών η ψυχ^η συμττορευθεΐσα θεω καΐ 
 ύττεριΒοΰσα α νυν εΙναί φαμεν και άνακύψασα εις το ον 
 όντως. Βιο Βη Βικαίως μόνη τττεροΰται ή του φιλοσόφου 
 Βιάνοια• ττρος yap εκείνοις αεί εστί μνημΎ) κατά Βύναμιν, 
 ττρος οισττερ θεός ων θεΐός εστί. τοις Βε Βη τοιούτοις άνηρ 
 ύτΓομνήμασιν ορθώς 'χ^ρώμενος, τεΧεους άεϊ τεΧετας τεΧού- 
 D μένος, τέΧεος όντως μόνος yίyvετaι. εξιστάμενος Βε τών 
 άνθρωττίνων σττουΒασμάτων καΐ ττρος τω θείω yιyvoμεvoς, 
 νουθετείται μεν ύττο τών τΓοΧΧών ως τταρακινών, ενθουσιάζων 
 Βε ΧεΧηθε τους ττοΧλούς. 
 
 "Εστ/ δ^ οΰν Βεΰρο ό ττάς ηκων Xόyoς ττερί της τετάρ- 
 της μανίας, ην όταν το τηΒε τις ορών κάΧΧος, του άΧηθους 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 317 
 
 Now into the same Place from whence each Soul cometh 
 she returneth not again until ten thousand years have been 
 accomplished ; for sooner is no Soul fledged with wings, save 
 the Soul of him who hath sought after True Wisdom without 
 deceit, or hath loved his Comrade in the bonds of Wisdom. 
 The Souls of such men, when the third course of a thousand 
 years is finished, if they have chosen this life three times in 
 order, being fledged with wings, do then depart. 
 
 But the other Souls, when they have ended their first life, 
 are brought before the judgment-seat ; and when they have 
 received sentence, ^me go to the prisons under the Ea rthf, and 
 there pay the penalty: and some by the sentence are exalted 
 and go into a certain place of the Heavens, where they fare 
 as beseemeth the life which they spent when they had Man's 
 form. But in the thousandth year both sorts, being come to 
 the casting of lots and to the choosing of the second life, 
 choose, every Soul, the life which pleaseth her. And now it 
 cometh. to pass that a Soul which was a Man's goeth into the 
 life of a Beast, and the Soul of a Beast which aforetime was 
 a Man goeth again into a Man ; for unto Man's shape no Soul 
 attaineth which never beheld the Truth ; the cause whereof is 
 this, — Man must needs understand the Specific Form which J 
 proceedeth from the perceiving of many things, and is made] 
 one by Thought. This is the EecoUection of Those Things 
 which each Soul ere while saw when she journeyed together 
 with God, despising the thin gs wh ich we now ^ay are, and 
 holding herself up to look at ^^y which Yeril:^ IsJ Where- 
 fore of right nn^tfh^ M^ηdJτF^^^^^^^^ of Wisdom is winged ; 
 for he alway ^eaveth in Memq^ , so far as he is able, unto 
 Those Things by cleaving unto which God is verily God. The 
 man, therefore, who useth these memorials aright, and is alway 
 
 eth verily ' C^^^ 
 
 . , ^ ^hjp.h^mpa i^^ 
 
 d o str i ve aft er) and givetMiimself unto God, they that are of ^ 
 
 tneworlo^buke him, saying that he is beside himself; for 
 they perceive not that he hath inspiration of God. 
 
 It is come to pass, then, that this Discourse is now 
 returned unto whence it came, to wit, unto the Fourth Sort 
 of Madness : for when a man beholdeth the beauty which is 
 here, and then calleth to min d the True Beauty, and getteth 
 
 a partaker in the perfect masteries, he alone becometh verilv /C^w 
 perfect ; but i nasmuch as [ he eschew eth t he thin gs wj 
 
318 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 άναμι,μνησκομβνος, τττεροΰταί τ€ καϊ άνατττερούμβνος ιτροθυ- 
 μονμενος άνατττεσθαί, αδυνατών Be, όρνιθος Βίκην βΧβττων 
 άνω, των κάτω Be άμe\ώv, αΐτίαν έχε* ώ? μανικώς 
 
 Ε Bίaκeίμevoς, ώ<ζ άρα αντη ττασών των evθoυσLάσeωv αρίστη 
 τ€ καϊ €ξ αρίστων τω Te 6χ^οντί καϊ τω κοίνωνονντί αυτής 
 yiyveTai, καϊ οτι ταύτης μeτe'χωv της μανίας 6 έρων των 
 κα\ων εραστής KaXetTat. Kadairep yap €Ϊρηταί, ττάσα μ€ν 
 άνθρωτΓου ψνχη ψύσeι, TeOeaTai, τα οντά, η ουκ αν rfKOev 
 260 ζΐς ToBe το ζωον, άναμίμνησκ€σθαι, δ* €Κ TcovBe eKelva ου 
 ράΒίον άττάστ), οΰθ' οσαυ βρα'χίως elBov TOTe TaKel, οΰθ* αΐ 
 Bedpo 7Γeσoϋσat έΒυστύγτ^σαν, ωστe ύττό τίνων ομιΧιων eirl 
 το άΒικον τpa7Γoμevac Χηθην ων τοτ€ elBov lepcav e^eti/. 
 oXiyaL Βη XeLTTOVTat, αίς το της μνήμης Ικανώς τrάpeστίv, 
 αύται Be όταν τ υ των eKel ομοίωμα ϊΒωσίν, έκττΧηττονταο 
 καϊ ούκέθ^ αυτών yiyvovTat, ο δ' βστί το ττάθος άηνοουσι 
 
 Β Βια το μη Ικανώς BcaL•σθάveσθaί. Βικαιοσύνης μ^ν ουν καϊ 
 σωφροσύνης, καϊ οσα άΧΧα τίμια '^^υ'χαίς, ουκ €ν€στί ή>€'γ^/ος 
 ούΒβν ev τοις TrjBe ομοιώμασιν, άΧΧα Βο* άμυΒρών οργάνων 
 μό^ις αυτών καϊ oXiyoi, έττϊ τας €ΐκονας Ι6ντ€ς θeώvτaι το 
 του €ΐκασθάντος yevoς. κάΧΧος Be τότ ην IBeiv Χαμττρόν, 
 oTe συν eύBaίμovΰ χορω μακαρίαν όψιν τ€ καϊ deav, 
 e7Γ6μevoι μeτa μ€ν Αώς ήμeΐς, άΧΧοι Be μeτ αΧΧου θeώv, 
 elBov Te καϊ eTeXodvTO τών τeXeτώv ην θέμις Xeyeiv 
 
 C μακαριωτάτην, ην ώpyιάζoμev οΧόκΧηροι μ€ν αύτοϊ 6vτeς 
 καϊ ά'TΓaθelς κακών, οσα ημάς ev υστίρω χρόνω ύ7Γeμev€v, 
 οΧόκΧηρα Be καϊ άττΧά καϊ άτpeμή καϊ eύBaίμova φάσματα 
 μυoύμevoί Te καϊ e7Γ07Γτeύovτeς ev axjyy καθαρά, καθαροϊ 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 
 
 wings and desire th with them to fly up, but is not able — 
 looking up into the sky like a bird, and heeding not the things 
 beneath — he is accounted as mad after the manner of the 
 Fourth Sort of Madness ; because that the spirit of his Mad- 
 ness wherewith he is possessed is the best, proceeding from 
 the best for him who hath it, and for him who partaketh of 
 it ; and because that he who loveth things beautiful with the 
 spirit of this Madness upon him hath the name of Lover ; 
 for, as hath been said, every Soul which is a Man's hath of 
 necessity seen the Things which Verily Are — else would it 
 not have entered into this creature ; but to call Those Things 
 to mind, by means of these, is not easy for every Soul ; 
 neither for those Souls which saw the Things There for a little 
 space, nor for those unto which, when they were fallen down 
 to the Earth, evil happened, so that they are turned to 
 iniquity by evil communications, and forget holy things 
 which they saw aforetime. Verily few are they which», 
 are left having Memory present with them in sufficient | 
 measure. 
 
 These, when they see any likeness of the Things There, 
 are amazed and cannot contain themselves any more ; but what 
 it is that moveth them they know not, because that they 
 perceive nothing clearly. 
 
 Now of Justice and Temperance and all the other Precious 
 Things of the Soul no glory at all shineth in the likenesses 
 which are here ; but using dull instincts and going unto 
 ngages, hardly do a few men attain unto the sight of that I 
 (One Thing whereoJ^'tKeyare the i mag es. Beauty Itself, 
 shining brightly, it was given unto them then to behold when 
 they were of the blessed choir and went — we in the train of 
 Zeus, and other Souls led by other Gods — and saw that great 
 and holy sight, and were made partakers of those Mysteries 
 which it is meet to call the most holy : the which they did then 
 celebrate, being themselves altogether fair and clean, and with- 
 out taste of the miseries prepared for them in the time there- 
 after, and being chosen to be eyewitnesses of visions which are 
 altogether fair, which are true with )^\\ ^ngleness/ which are 
 without variablenessj which contain the fulness of jo y. Thes 
 are the Things which our Souls did then see inroure ligh^, 
 being themselves/pure and without the mark of this Vnich^ "^ve 
 
320 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 6ντ€ζ καϊ ασήμαντοι τούτου, ο νυν σώμα ττερί,ψεροντε^ 
 ονομάζομβν, οστρίου τρόττον ΒεΒβσμβυμένοι. 
 
 Ύαΰτα μεν οΰν μνήμτ} κεγαρίσθω, Βι* ην ττόθω των τ6τ€ 
 νυν μακροτερα βϊρηται, ττερί he κάΧΚου<ζ, ωσιτερ βϊττομβν, 
 D μ€τ βκβίνων τ€ βΚαμττβν 6ν, Sedpo τ€ έΧθόντες κατζίΧήφαμβν 
 αύτο Βία τήζ ζναρ^€στάτη<ζ αΙσθήσ€ω<ζ των ήμβτβρων 
 στίΧβον εναργέστατα. οψις yap ήμίν οξυτάτη των Bici 
 του σώματος έρχεται αισθήσεων fj φρόνησις ουχ οράται* 
 Βεινούς yap αν τταρείγεν έρωτας, εϊ τι τοιούτον εαυτής 
 εναργές εϊΒωΧον τταρείγετο εις oyfriv ιόν, και ταΧΧα οσα 
 εραστά' νυν Βε κάΧΧος μόνον ταύτην εσγε μοΐραν, ώστ 
 Ε εκφανεστατον είναι καϊ ερασμιώτατον. 6 μεν οΰν μη 
 νεοτεΧής ή Βιεφθαρμενος ουκ οξέως ενθενΒε εκεΐσε φέρεται 
 ττρος αύτο το κάΧΧος, θεώμενος αύτου την τ^Βε εττοίνυμίαν. 
 ώστ ου σέβεται ττροσορών, αλλ* ή^ονη τταραΒούς τετράττοΒος 
 νόμον βαίνειν εττιγειρεΐ καϊ τταιΒοστΓορεΐν, καϊ ΰβρει ττροσ- 
 251 ομιΧών ου ΒέΒοικεν ουδ* αισγυνεται τταρα φύσιν ήΒονήν 
 Βιώκων. 6 Βε άργιτεΧής, 6 τών τότε πτοΧυθεάμων, όταν 
 ΘεοειΒες ττρόσωττον ϊΒη καΧΧος ευ μεμιμημένον, ή τίνα 
 σώματος ΙΒέαν, ττρώτον μεν έφριξε, και τι τών τότε 
 ύττήΧθεν αύτον Βειμάτων, είτα ττροσορών ώς Θεον σέβεται, 
 καϊ εΐ μη ΒεΒιείη την της σφόΒρα μανίας Βόξαν, θύοι αν 
 ώς άηαΧματι καϊ θεώ τοις τταιΒικοΐς. ΙΒόντα Βε αυτόν, 
 Β οίον εκ της φρίκης, μεταβοΧή τε καϊ ΙΒρώς καϊ θερμότης 
 άήθης Χαμβάνει. Βεξάμενος yap του κάΧΧους την άττορροήν 
 Βιά τών ομμάτων εθερμάνθη, η ή του τττεροΰ φύσις 
 άρΒεται, θερμανθεντος Βε ετάκη τα ττερϊ την εκφυσιν, α 
 ττάΧαι ύτΓΟ σκΧηρότητος συμμεμυκοτα εϊpyε μη βΧαστάνειν. 
 
rA^-^^ 
 
 THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 1321 
 
 id now _ carrj;_about with usAs the fish carrieth 
 >n-house of his shel D 
 Let these words, then, be offered for a thanksgiving to 
 
 Memory, for whose sake we, as remembering our joys that are 
 past, have lengthened this Discourse. 
 
 Now, as touching Beauty : — We beheld it shining, as hath "^ 
 been said, amongst those other Visions ; and when we came 
 hither, we apprehended it glittering most clearly, by means of 
 that sense which in us is the most clear, to wit, eyesight, 
 which is the keenest sense that the body conveyeth. But the — ► 
 eye seeth not Wisdom. what marvellous love would Wisdom 
 cause to spring up in the hearts of men, if she sent forth 
 a clear likeness of herself also, even as Beauty doth, and it 
 entered into our eyes together with the likenesses of all the 
 other Things which be worthy of Love! But only unto 
 Beauty hath this portion been given. Wherefore Beauty is 
 the most evident of all, and the best beloved. 
 
 Now, he who hath not lately partaken of the heavenly 
 Mysteries, or hath been corrupted, is not quickly carried hence 
 to that Other Place and to Beauty Itself, when he seeth the 
 things which here are calledL after the name thereof. Where- 
 fore, looking upon these, ^e giveth t hem/ n o t reverenc e, but, ΓλΙί 
 delivering himself up to pleasure, after Cthe m an ner jiL-ar-beas t '^ίΤ 
 he leapet h upon therii. desirin^/ io beget offsp ring '^ccordjagjbo 'πΓίί 
 the flesh , and feareth not to have his conversationnn ims 
 nesSjAnor is ashamed of following after pleasure contrar] 
 nature. (But he who hath lately partaken, who hath beheld 
 many of the Things There, when he seeth a face, or the figure 
 of a person, made in the very likeness of Beauty, first his flesh 
 trembleth, and awe of those things which he saw aforetime 
 entereth into his heart ; then he looketh, and worshippeth the 
 Beautiful One as a God, and, were he not afraid that men jJAt^ 
 should account him a maniac, would offer sacrifice to his 
 Beloved, as to a graven image and a God. Then while he 
 looketh^ after the trft^ [^,bljn,g, ^,g jt nsp.th to happen, sweating 
 and (unwonted heati take ^ hol d ol hiA, for he hath received the 
 efiluxion of beauty througlTliis eyes, and is made hot, so that 
 the wings in him are watered ; for when he is made hot, the 
 parts where the wings sj)rout are melted, which before were 
 closed by reason of their hardness and hindered the feathers 
 
 γ 
 
322 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 εΐΓίρρυείσης Be της τροφής ωΒησε re καΐ ώρμησβ φύβσθαι 
 άτΓΟ της ρίζης ο του τττβρου καυλός ύττο τταν το της 
 'ψ'νχή^ βΙΒος' ττασα yap ην το τταΚαν τττβρωτη. 
 
 C Ζει ουν iv τούτω οΚη καϊ άνακηκί,εί, καϊ οττβρ το των 
 
 οΒοντοφυούντων ττάθος ττβρί τους οΒόντας jlyveTat,, όταν 
 άρτι φύωσο, κνήσίς re καΧ ά^ανάκτησις irepl τα ούλα, 
 ταύτον Βη ΊΓβτΓονθβν η του ΤΓτβροφυεΐν άργομίνου 'ψυ'χΐ]' 
 ζει Τ€ καϊ ατγανακτβΐ καϊ γαργαλίζεται φύουσα τα τττερά. 
 όταν μβν οΰν βλέττουσα ττρος το του τταίΒος κάλλος, εκείθεν 
 μέρη εττιόντα καϊ ρέοντα, α Βη Βια ταύτα Ίμερος καΧεΙταν, 
 Βε'χρμενη τον ϊμερον άρΒηταί τε καϊ θερμαίνηται, λωφα τε 
 
 D της οΒύνης καϊ ^ε^ηθεν όταν Βε χωρϊς ^ενηταν καϊ 
 αύχμήσ^, τα των ΒίεξοΒων στόματα, rj το τττερον ορμά, 
 συναυαίνόμενα μύσαντα άττοκλείει την βλάστην του τττεροΰ. 
 ή δ' εντός μετά του Ιμερου άττο κεκλιμένη, ττηΒώσα οίον τα 
 σφύζοντα, ttj ΒιεξόΒω εγχρίει εκάσττ) τη καθ^ αυτήν, ώστε 
 ττασα κεντουμενη κύκλω η ψυχή οίστρα καϊ οΒυνάται, 
 μνήμην Β αΰ έχουσα του κάλου ηεηηθεν, εκ δ* αμφοτέρων 
 
 Ε μεμιημενων άΒημονεΐ τε τη άτοττία του ττάθους καϊ 
 άτΓορουσα λυττα, καϊ εμμανης ούσα ούτε νυκτός Βύναται 
 καθεύΒειν ούτε μεθ ήμεραν, ου αν η, μενειν, θεΐ Βε ττοθοϋσα 
 οτΓου αν οϊηται, οψεσθαί τον έχοντα το κάλλος. ΙΒοΰσα 
 Βε καϊ ετΓοχετευσαμενη ϊμερον έλυσε μεν τα τότε συμ- 
 Ίτεφρα^μενα, άναττνοην Βε λαβοΰσα κέντρων τε καϊ ώΒίνων 
 εληξεν, ήΒονήν δ' αΰ ταύτην ^λυκυτάτην εν τω τταρόντί 
 252 καρτΓουται. όθεν Βή εκουσα είναι ουκ άττολείττεται, ούΒε 
 τίνα του καλοΰ ττερϊ ττλείονος ττοιεΐται, άλλα μητέρων Τ€ 
 καϊ άΒελφών καϊ εταίρων ττάντων λελησται, καϊ ουσίας Be 
 άμελειαν άττολλυμενης τταρ ούΒεν τίθεται, νομίμων Βε καϊ 
 εύσχημονων, οίς ττρο του εκαλλωττίζετο, ττάντων κατα- 
 φρονήσασα Βουλεύειν έτοιμη καϊ κοιμάσθαι οττου αν εα τις 
 ε^^υτάτω του ττοθου• ττρος yap τω σεβεσθαι τον το 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH ]^ 32 
 
 from growing. When, therefore, the nourishment floweth unto 
 
 them, the stalks of the feathers swell, and are moved for to 
 
 grow from their roots under the whole surface of \ the Soul; 
 
 for aforetime the whole Soul was feathered. It ^ometh to 
 
 pass then that the whole Soul doth boil and bubble ; and as 
 
 it happeneth unto those who are teething, when thoir teeth 
 
 are lately begun to grow, that there is an itching m their 
 
 gums and distress, even so doth it happen unto the Soul of 
 
 him who beginneth to put forth wings ; for his Soul boileth 
 
 and is in distress and itcheth when she putteth forthXher 
 
 feathers. When, therefore, she looketh upon the beauty of ner 
 
 Beloved, parts (μβρη) come thence unto her in a stream (whioJi 
 
 for this cause are called ΐμβροζ) ; and she, receiving them, iS 
 
 watered and made hot, and cieaseth from her pain and rejoiceth., , . 
 
 But ^heiLshQ is parted from her Beloved and wa xeth dry, the\ v^ 
 
 (mouths ( Gf the passages ) whereb^he feathers shoot fort^ , being , ^ . 
 parched and closed μρ . hinnjiF it Ki ri];youting of theT^ather^ \ V\ ( 
 ( which is shut in t o getq pr^itfl^Desir^ and leapeth as a man's V ,V 
 pulse, beating against eacti passage that withstandeth it, so \ Λ-\^^ 
 that the whole Soul, being pricked on every side, is filled with ν ^ V 
 frenzy and travaileth : but contrariwise, having memory of the 
 Beautiful One, she rejoiceth ; so that this strange thing hap- fj (1 
 
 peneth unto her — her pain is mingled with joy, and she is 
 bewildered, and striveth to find a way, but findeth none; and, AV 
 
 being filled with madness, she cannot sleep by night nor stay Γ 
 
 in one place by day, but runneth to and fro wistful, if per- ^^ ^ 
 chance she may behold the One who possesseth that Beauty. 
 And, beholding, she draweth Desire from the channel thereof 
 unto her, and the entrances which were shut are opened, and 
 she taketh breath and ceaseth from her prickings and travail, 
 and instead thereof reapeth the sweetest pleasure for the 
 present time. Wherefore willingly she departeth not, esteem- 
 ing no one more highly than the Beloved ; but mother, and 
 brethren, and all her friends, she forgetteth, and thinketh it 
 of no account that her substance is wasted through neglectful- 
 ness ; and the things which are approved of men and of good 
 report, wherein she did aforetime take pride, all these she 
 now doth despise, and is willing to be a slave, and make her 
 lodging wheresoever shg may come nearest unto her Love ; 
 for she cometh not to worship only, but because she hath 
 
 
324 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 κάΧΧοζ εγοντα Ιατρον €νρηκ6 μόνον των ^e^iaraiv ττονων» 
 Β τοΰτο δε το ττάθος, ω τταΐ KoXe, 7Γ/309 ον Βή μοί ο Χο^ος, 
 άνθρωτΓοι μεν ^Έ^ρωτα ονομάζονσι, θβοί Be ο καΧουσιν 
 άκουσας €ΐκότω<! Βία νεότητα yeXdaeL. Xiyovai Be, οΐμαι. 
 Τίνες ΌμηριΒών εκ των αττοθετων εττών Βύο εττη εις τον 
 "Ερωτα, ων το έτερον ύβροστικον ττάνυ καΐ ου σφοΒρα τι 
 εμμετρον, υμνουσν Βε ώΒε' 
 
 rhv 8' ητοί θνητοί μ^ν "Ερωτα καλονσι ποτηνόν, 
 C αθάνατοι δέ Πτ€/)ωτα δια τττ^ρόφοιτον ανάγκην. 
 
 τούτοις Βη εξ€στί μεν ττείθεσθαί, εξεστι, Βε μψ όμως Βε ή 
 yε αΙτία και το ττάθος των ερώντων τοΰτ εκείνο τυγχάνει 6ν. 
 Ύών μεν οΰν Αιος οτταΒών 6 Χηφθεϊς εμβριθεστερον 
 Βύναται φερειν το τον τττερωννμου άχθος' όσοι Βε *Άρεώς 
 τε Θεραττενταί, καΐ μετ εκείνου ττεριεττόΧουν, όταν υττ 
 'Έρωτος άΧωσι, και το οίηθωσιν άΒίκεΐσθαί ύττο του 
 ερωμένου, φονικοί και έτοιμοι καθιερεύειν αυτούς τε και τα 
 
 D ΊταιΒικά, και οΰτω καθ* εκαστον θεόν, ου έκαστος ην 
 χορευτής, εκείνον τιμών τε και μιμούμενος εις το Βυνατον 
 ξτ), εως αν η άΒιάφθορος, και την τβΒε ττρώτην ^ενεσιν 
 βιοτεύεΐ' και τούτω τω τρόττω ττρός τε τους ερωμένους και 
 ττρος τους άΧΧους ομιΧεΐ τε καΐ ττροσφερεται. τόν τε οΰν 
 έρωτα των καΧών ιτρος τρόπου εκΧε^εται έκαστος, και ώς 
 θεον αύτον εκείνον οντά εαυτω οίον άηάΧμα τεκταίνεταί τε 
 
 Ε κοϋί κατακοσμεί, ως τιμησων τε και ορηιάσων, οι μεν Βη 
 ουν Δί09 ti^iiov τίνα είναι ζητοΰσι την ψυχην τον νφ* 
 αυτών ερώμενον, σκοττοϋσιν ουν, ει φιΧόσοφός τε και 
 ηγεμονικός την φύσιν, και όταν αύτον εύρόντες ερασθώσι, 
 τταν ΊΓΟιουσιν, οττως τοιούτος εσται, εαν ουν μη ττροτερον 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 325 
 
 found that the One who possesseth that Beauty is the sole 
 physician of her greatest troubles. 
 
 Now this affection, fair boy, unto whom my whole Dis- 
 course is dedicate, men call Eros ; but as touching the name 
 which the Gods call it, when thou hearest it haply thou wilt 
 laugh because it is new — for some of the disciples of Homer, 
 out of the Secret Verses, recite two verses unto Eros, whereof 
 one is very impudent, and not good in metre. Now these are 
 the verses of their hymn : — 
 
 Men call him Eros by name, sumaming him Eros the Flyer ; 
 
 Gods call him Pteros, because that he haiinteth on Wings and compelleth.^ 
 
 These things, then, it is permitted to a man to believe, or 
 believe not, as he is minded. Nevertheless, the case of those 
 that be in love, and their state, is that which hath been said. 
 
 Now, if it be one of the train of Zeus that is taken, he is 
 able more stoutly to bear the burden of him whose name is 
 Winged ; but they who be servants of Ares, and made the 
 circuit along with him, when they are taken by Eros, and 
 think that they are injured in aught by the Beloved One, are 
 ready to shed blood and make a sacrifice of themselves and the 
 Beloved One. As each, then, was of the choir of a certain 
 God, him he honoureth alway, and maketh his example accord- 
 ing to his ability, so long as he is uncorrupt and liveth the 
 life of the first birth here ; and in this manner likewise he 
 behaveth himself in his conversation toward the Beloved 
 Ones and other men. 
 
 It Cometh to pass, then, that each man, according to his 
 natural temper, chooseth his Beloved and maketh him his God, 
 and fashioneth and adorneth him as a graven image, to honour 
 him and celebrate mysteries before him. They, therefore, who 
 are of the company of Zeus, seeking for a Beloved One like unto 
 Zeus in soul, inquire whether some one be by nature a lover of 
 True Wisdom and able to rule ; and when they have found what 
 they seek, and are fallen in love, they do all so that the Beloved 
 One shall be altogether such as they seek, to wit, like unto 
 Zeus. Then, indeed, if they have not already made a begin- 
 
 • 1 — reading ντερόψοίτον avayK -ην. Some MSS. and Stobaeus read ιττβροφύτορ' 
 avayK7)v, where the improperly lengthened υ may be thought to justify the ού 
 σφόδρα τι Ιίμμχτρον further. Αθάνατοι δέ ΙΙτέρωτα by itself, however, is bad 
 enough. 
 
326 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 βμβββώσί τω βττι,τηΒβνματι,, rare βττιχ^εφησαντες μανθάνουσι, 
 τ€ όθεν αν η Βύνωνταο καΐ αυτοί μετερ'χ^ονταί. Ι-χνεύοντβ^ 
 Ee τταρ εαυτών άνευρίσκειν την του σφετερου θεοΰ ψύσι,ν, 
 263 ευτΓοροϋσι Blo, το συντόνως ηναιγκάσθαί ττρος τον Θεον 
 βΧεττειν, καΐ εφατττομενοι αυτού ττ} μνήμτι ενθουσιώντες εξ 
 εκείνου Χαμβάνουσο τα εθη καΐ τα εττΰτηΒεύματα, καθ^ όσον 
 Βυνατον θεοΰ άνθρώττω μετασ'χεΐν. καϊ τούτων Βη τον 
 ερώμενον αΐτίώμενοί ετι τε μαΧΚον άγαττώσί, καν εκ Δίό? 
 άρύτωσιν ωσττερ αΐ βάκχ^αι, εττΐ την του ερωμένου ψυχην 
 ε7ΓαντΧοϋντε<ζ ττοωΰσιν ώς Βυνατον ομοιότατον τω σφετερω 
 
 Β θεω, οσοί δ' αυ μεθ' '^ΐίρας εϊττοντο, βασϊΚνκον ζητοΰσι, 
 καϊ εύρόντες ττερί τούτον ιτάντα Βρωσι τα αυτά. οι Βε 
 ΆτΓοΧΧωνός τε καϊ εκάστου των θέων οΰτω κατα τον θεον 
 Ιοντες ζητοΰσι τον σφετερον τταΐΒα ττεφυκεναι, καϊ όταν 
 κτησωνται, μιμούμενοι αυτοί τε καϊ τα τταιΒικα ττείθοντες 
 καϊ ρυθμίζοντες εις το εκείνου εττιτήΒευμα καϊ ιΒεαν ά^γουσιν, 
 οση εκάστω Βύναμις, ου φθόνω oiS* άνεΧευθερω Βυσμενεία 
 'χρώμενοι ττρος τα τταιΒικά, αλλ* εΙς ομοιότητα αύτοΐς καϊ 
 
 C τω θεω, ον αν τιμώσι, ττάσαν ττάντως 6 τι μάΧιστα ττειρώ- 
 μενοι dyειv οΰτω ττοίοΰσι. ττροθυμία μεν οΰν των ώς 
 άΧηθως ερώντων καϊ τεΧετη, εάν γε Βιαττράξωνται ο ττρο- 
 θυμοΰνται, ην Χεηω, οΰτω καΧή τε καϊ εύΒαιμονικη ΰττο τοΰ 
 Βι έρωτα μανεντος φίΧου τω φιΧηθεντι yί<yvετaι, εάν αίρεθ'β. 
 άΧίσκεται Βε Βη 6 αίρεθεϊς τοιωΒε τρόττω. 
 
 Ίζ,αθάττερ εν άργτ) τοΰΒε τοΰ μύθου τρί'χτ) ΒιειΧόμην 
 
 D ψυ'χην εκάστην, Ιτητομόρφω μεν Βύο τινε εϊΒη, ήνιογ^ικον Βε 
 εΙΒος τρίτον, καϊ νΰν ετι ήμΐν ταΰτα μενετω. των Βε Βη 
 ΙτΓττων ο μεν, φαμεν, αγαθός, 6 δ* οΰ' άρετη Βε τις τοΰ 
 άβαθου η κακοΰ κακία, ου Βιείττομεν, νΰν Βε Χεκτέον. 6 
 μεν τοίνυν αύτοΐν εν Trj καΧΧίονι στάσει ων το τε εΙΒος 
 ορθός καϊ Βιηρθρωμενος, ΰψαύχ7]ν, εττί^ρυττος, Χευκος ΙΒεΐν, 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 327 
 
 ning of this endeavour, do they take the matter in hand, and 
 both learn from whomsoever they are able to learn, and them- 
 selves pursue the knowledge thereof; and questioning in their 
 own souls to find therefrom the nature of their own God, they 
 seek not in vain, because that they are constrained to look 
 steadfastly upon their God, and by memory lay hold on him, 
 and, being filled with his spirit, receive of him their habitudes 
 and way of life, so far as man can partake of God. Whereof 
 they account the Beloved One the cause, and therefore have 
 they the more pleasure in him ; and if the river, wherefrom 
 even as Bacchae they draw their nourishment, flow from Zeus, 
 then do they turn the waters thereof upon the Soul of the 
 Beloved One, and make it as like unto their own God as is 
 possible. 
 
 He who was of the train of Hera seeketh after one who is 
 Royal, and having found, doth in all things as the follower of 
 Zeus doth. [He who was of the train of Apollo or of any 
 other God, observing the nature of his own God, seeketh to 
 have a comrade of the like nature ; and when he hath gotten 
 such an one, he taketh the God for an example unto himself, and 
 teaching and guiding, bringeth the Beloved One also unto the 
 way and likeness of the God as far as can be, striving without 
 envy or grudging or malice by all means to bring the Beloved 
 One unto the full likeness of himself and of whichsoever God 
 he himself honoureth. 
 
 |ie Desire, t^e n, of them that truly love, and their Initia- 
 tion, iftEeyacco^plish that which they desire, is verily a fair 
 and blessed boon o^towed, by the friend whom Love hath 
 made mad, upon him wh^ftm hp bqth.p.hn.<^P,^ fny h|« ^τ-ίρηΗ and 
 caught. Now, it is after this wise^at he is. .caught) Whereas 
 at the beginning of this Tale we said that each Soul hath three 
 parts — two thereof in the form of Horses, and the third part in 
 the form of a Charioteer]; so now we would have this remain 
 as it was then told, and that one of the Horses is good and 
 the other is not. But what is the virtue of the good Horse 
 and the illness of the evil Horse we did not declare ; now, 
 therefore, must we tell it. 
 
 That one of the two which hath the more honourable 
 station, in form is straight and well-knit, with a high neck and 
 an arched nose, in colour white, with black eyes, a lover of 
 
328 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 μ€\αν6μματο<ζ, τιμής €ραστη<; μβτα σωφροσύνης τ€ καϊ 
 αΙΒονς, καϊ αληθινής Βόξης εταίρος, αττΚηκτος κέλεύματί 
 
 £ μόνον καϊ ΧοΎφ ηνιο'χείται • 6 h' αυ σκόΧίος, ττοΧυς, είκ^ 
 σνμττεφορημένος, κρατ€ραύχ7}ν, βραγυτράγτιΧος^ σίμοττρόσ- 
 ωτΓος, μέλάγχ^ρως, ^γΧανκόμματος, ϋφαιμος, ύβρεως καϊ 
 αλαζονείας εταίρος, ττερϊ ωτα λάσιος, κωφός, μάστί'γι μετά 
 κέντρων μόιγις νττείκων. 
 
 'Όταν δ' ουν 6 ηνίο'χος ΙΒων το ερωτικον όμμα, ττασαν 
 αίσθήσει Βιαθερμηνας την ψνχήν, 'γαρ^γαλισμοΰ τε καϊ ττοθου 
 254 κέντρων υττοττλησθη, 6 μεν ευττειθης τω ηνιό'χω των ϊτητων, 
 αεί τε καϊ τότε αΙΒοΐ βιαζόμενος, εαυτόν κατεγει μη 
 ετΓίττηΒαν τω ερωμενω• ο Βε οντε κέντρων ηνιογ^ικών οντε 
 μάστί'^ος ετι εντρεττεται, σκιρτών Βε βία φέρεται, καϊ ττάντα 
 ττρά'^ματα ιταρεγων τω σνζνγί τε καϊ ηνιό'χω αναγκάζει 
 Ιεναι τε ττρος τα τταιΒικα καϊ μνείαν ττοιεΐσθαι της των 
 άφροΒισίων χάριτος, τώ Βε κατ άρχας μεν άντιτείνετον 
 
 Β ά^γανακτοϋντε, ως Βεινα καϊ τταράνομα αν ay κάζο μένω• τελεν- 
 τώντε Βε, όταν μηΒεν η ττερας κακοΰ, ττορενεσθον απομένω, 
 εϊξαντε καϊ όμολογησαντε ιτοιησειν το κελενόμενον. καϊ 
 ττρος αντω τ iyivovTO καϊ εΙΒον την όψιν την των 
 τταιΒικών άστράτΓΤονσαν, ιΒόντος Βε τον ηνιόχου ή μνήμη 
 ττρος την τον κάλλονς φνσιν ηνεχθη, καϊ ττάλιν εϊΒεν αντην 
 μετά σωφροσύνης εν άηνω βάθρω βεβώσαν. ΙΒονσα Βε 
 εΒεισε τε καϊ σεφθεΐσα άνεττεσεν ντττία, καϊ άμα ηναηκάσβη 
 
 C εΙς τοντΐίσω ελκύσαι τάς ηνίας οντω σφοΒρα, ώστε εττϊ τά 
 Ισχία άμφω καθίσαι τώ ίττττω, τον μεν εκόντα Βιά το μη 
 άντιτείνειν, τον Βε νβριστην μάλα άκοντα, άττελθόντε Βε 
 άττωτερω, ο μεν νττ αισχύνης τε καϊ θάμβονς ιΒρώτι ττασαν 
 έβρεξε την ψνχην, 6 Βε, λήξας της οΒύνης, ην νττο τον 
 χαλινον τε εσχε καϊ τον πτώματος, μό'γις εξαναττνεύσας 
 ελοιΒόρησεν opyrj, ττοΧλά κακίζων τόν τε ήνίοχον καϊ τον 
 
 D ομόζνγα ως Βειλία τε καϊ άνανΒρία λιττόντε την τάξιν καϊ 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 329 
 
 honour in all temperance and modesty, a friend of true glory, 
 needing not the whip, being guided by the mere word of the 
 Charioteer. But the other Horse is crooked, lumpish, ill-jointed, 
 with a stiff neck, a short throat, a snub nose, in colour black, 
 with grey eyes, sanguineous, a friend of lust and boastfulness, 
 hairy about the ears, deaf, hardly submitting himself to the 
 lash and the pricks. 
 
 Now when the Charioteer beholdeth the Vision of Love, 
 and his whole Soul is warmed throughly by the sight, and he 
 is altogether full of itchings and the prickings of desire, then 
 that Horse which is obedient to the Charioteer, being con- 
 strained then and alway by modesty, holdeth himself back 
 from rushing upon the Beloved One ; but the other Horse 
 careth no longer for the Charioteer's pricks nor for his whip, 
 but pranceth, and with violence chargeth, and, striving with 
 his fellow and with the Charioteer, compelleth them to go 
 unto the Beloved One and make mention of the sweetness of 
 carnal love. At first the twain resist, taking it ill that they 
 are constrained unto wickedness ; but at the last, since their 
 evil state hath no ending, they go as the evil Horse leadeth, 
 yielding themselves up, and consenting to do what he biddeth. 
 Moreover, now are they come near, and see the countenance of 
 the Beloved One gloriously shining. Which when the Charioteer 
 seeth, his memory is straightway carried back unto the Form 
 of the Eternal Beauty. Her he again beholdeth standing girt 
 with temperance upon her holy pedestal ; and, beholding her, 
 he is filled with fear and reverence, and falleth backward, and 
 thereat must needs pull the reins back with force, so that he 
 bringeth both the Horses down upon their haunches — the one 
 willingly, because that he resisteth not, but the lascivious one 
 against his will altogether. 
 
 Now when the two Horses are come away a little further 
 from the Beloved, the one, by reason of his shame and panic, 
 wetteth all the Soul with sweat ; and the other, having ceased 
 from the pain which he had from the bit and from his falling 
 down, hardly recovering breath, in anger upbraideth, and 
 heapeth curseg^^up pUj thQ^ CharigtQ^r ^atuL^his fellow: Horse, y^ 
 saying that, fcecause of cowamic e and weak -heartedney , they 
 have left their place aj^ointed unto them and the promise 
 which they made. 
 
 )■ 
 
330 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ομ,οΧο^ίαν. καΐ ttoKlv ουκ eOeXovra^^ ττροσίέναί άνα'^κάζων 
 μό'γίς συνβ'χωρησβ^ Ββομενων είσαΰθος ντΓβρβαΧβσθαί. €Χθον~ 
 το'ζ he Toij σνντβθβντος 'χ^ρόνου, \ον\ άμνημονβΐν ττροστΓΟίον- 
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 σών, 6TL μάΧΧον του ύβριστου ϊτητου βκ των οΒοντων βία 
 οττίσω σιτάσας τον yaXivov, την τ€ κακη^γορον ^γΧώτταν 
 καΐ τας ^γνάθους καθ^μαξβ κα\ τα σκβΧη τ€ καΐ τα Ισ-γ^ία 
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 26Β "Ατ6 ονν ττάσαν θεραττείαν ως Ισοθεος Θεραττενό μένος 
 ονχ^ ύτΓο σγτηματίζομενου του ερώντος, αλλ' άΧηθώς τούτο 
 ττετΓονθοτος, καϊ αύτος ων φύσει φίΧος [εΙς ταύτον dyei 
 την φίΧίαν] τω θεραττεύοντι, εαν άρα καϊ εν τω ιτρόσθεν νττο 
 ξνμφοίτητών η Τίνων άΧΧων ΒιαβεβΧημενος rj, Χε'γόντων, 
 ως αίσγ^ρον ερωντί ττΧησιάζειν, καϊ Βία τοντο άττωθη τον 
 ερώντα, ττροΐοντος Βε ηΒη τον χρόνον η τε ηΧικία καϊ το 
 
 Β χρ€ων ηηαηεν εις το ττροσεσθαι αύτον εΙς ομιΧίαν, ού yap 
 ΒήτΓΟτε εΐμαρταί κακόν κακω φίΧον ούΒ* άτ/αθον μη φιΧον 
 αηαθω είναι, ττροσεμενου Βε και Xoyov τε και ομιΧίαν 
 Βεξαμενου, εγγυ^ει/ ή εύνοια yιyvoμεvη του ερώντος εκττΧήττει 
 τον ερώμενον, Βιαισθανόμενον, οτι ούδ* οι ξύμτταντες άΧΧοι 
 φίΧοι τε και οικείοι μοΐραν φιΧίας ούΒεμίαν τταρεγονται 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 331 
 
 Then again, when they are not willing to go near, he 
 constraineth them, and hardly consenteth when they beseech 
 that the matter may be deferred to some other time : and 
 when the time agreed upon cometh, and the two make 
 pretence of not remembering, he putteth them in mind, and 
 puUeth them with force, neighing, and compelling them again 
 to come near for to speak the same words unto the Beloved ; 
 and when they are come near, he . bendeth down his head, and 
 stretcheth out his tail, and (bite th the bit) and puUeth it 
 shamelessly. But the Charioteer, being moved in his heart 
 this second time as the first time, yea more exceedingly, 
 falleth backward as it were from before the barrier at the 
 starting place of the racecourse, and more violently doth draw 
 the bit unto him from the teeth of the lascivious Horse, and 
 maketh his cursing tongue and his jaws bloody, and presseth 
 his legs and haunches to the earth, and delivereth him up to 
 torment. 
 
 Now when the evil Horse, having oft-times suffered the 
 same correction, ceaseth from his wantonness, being humbled, 
 he foUoweth the guidance of the Charioteer, and, whenever he 
 seeth the Beautiful One, is brought to naught with terror. 
 So it cometh to pass in the end that the Soul of the Lover 
 foUoweth the Beloved One in reverence and fear. 
 
 The Beloved then being served as a God with all service, 
 by one who maketh not a pretence of love but loveth truly, 
 and being by nature a friend unto him who serveth, even 
 though in time past fellow disciples and others have made 
 mischief with their tongues, saying that it is not seemly to come 
 near unto a Lover, and though by reason of this the Beloved 
 hath rejected the Lover, yet in process of time do ripeness 
 of age and need of him cause the Beloved to receive the Lover 
 into companionship ; for surely it hath never been ordained that 
 evil shall be friend to evil, or good shall not be friend to good. 
 
 When, therefore, the Beloved receiveth the Lover, and 
 hath accepted his speech and companionship, then doth the 
 good-will of the Lover drawing very nigh fill the Beloved with 
 amazement ; and lo ! in comparison with this friend who hath 
 in him the spirit of God, not even the whole company of 
 other friends and kinsfelk provideth any portion at all of 
 friendship ! 
 
332 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ττρός τον evOeov φίΧον. όταν δε χρονίξτ] τούτο Βρών καϊ 
 ττΧησίάζτ) μβτα του ατΓΤβσθαι ev re yvfjuvaaioi^i καϊ iv ταΐς 
 
 C αΧλαις ομιλίαις, τ6τ ήΒη ή του ρβνματος εκείνου ττηγη, ον 
 ΐμβρον Ζβύς ΤανυμήΒους έρών ώνομασε, ττοΧΧη φερομένη 
 ττρος τον εραστην, ή μεν εν<ζ αύτον εΒυ, ή S* άττομεστου- 
 μενου εξω άττορρεΐ' καϊ οίον ττνεΰμα ή τί,ς ηγω άττο Χείων 
 τε και στερεών άΧΧομενη ττάΧιν όθεν ώρμήθη φέρεται, οΰτω 
 το του κάΧΧους ρεύμα ττάΧιν εΙς τον καΧον Βια των ομμά- 
 των Ιόν, 7} ττεφυκεν εττΐ την ψυχτ}ν Ιεναι, άφικόμενον καϊ 
 
 D άνατΓτερώσαν τας ΒίόΒους των τττερών αρΒει τε καϊ ωρμησε 
 τΓτεροφυεΐν τε, καϊ την του ερωμένου αΰ ψυγΓίν έρωτος 
 ενεττΧησεν. , ερα μεν ουν, ότου Βε, άττορεΐ* καϊ οΰθ* ο τι 
 ττετΓονθεν όΙΒεν ούΒ έχβί φράσαι, aXV οίον άττ αΚΚου 
 οφθαΧμίας άττοΧεΧαυκώς ιτρόφασιν είττεΐν ουκ εγει, ωσττερ 
 Βε εν κατότΓτρω εν τω ερώντί εαυτόν ορών ΧεΧηθε, καϊ 
 όταν μεν εκείνος irapfj, Χη'^ει κατά ταύτα εκείνω της οΒύνης* 
 όταν Βε airf], κατά ταύτα αυ ττοθεΐ καϊ ττοθείται, εϊΒωΧον 
 
 Ε έρωτος άντερωτα ε-χων καΧεΐ Βε αύτον καϊ οϊεται ούκ 
 έρωτα, άΧΧά φίΧίαν είναι, εττιθυμεΐ Βε εκείνω τταραττΧησίως 
 μεν, άσθενεστερως Βε οράν, άτττεσθαι, φιΧεΐν, συηκατακει- 
 σθαι. καϊ Βή, οίον εικός, ττοιεί το μετά τούτο τα'χυ ταύτα» 
 εν ουν τη συ'γκοιμησει του μεν εραστού 6 άκόΧαστος Χτητος 
 έχει 6 τι Χε'γει ττρος τον ηνίο'χον, καϊ άξιοι άντϊ ττοΧΧών 
 256 ΊΓονων σμικρά άττόΧαύσαΐ' 6 Βε τών τταιΒικών ε'χει μεν ούΒεν 
 είττεΐν, στταρ^ών Βε καϊ άττορών ττεριβάΧΧει τον εραστην 
 καϊ φιΧεΐ, ώς σφοΒρ εύνουν άστταζόμενος, όταν τε συιγκατα- 
 κεωνται, οΐός εστί μη αν άτταρνηθήναι το αυτού μέρος 
 γαρίσασθαι τω ερώντι, ει Βεηθείη τυγειν ο Βε ομόζυξ αυ 
 μετά τού ηνιό'χρυ ττρος ταύτα μετ αίΒούς καϊ ΧοΎου 
 αντιτείνει, 
 
 ^Έιάν μεν Βη ουν εις τετα'^μενην τε Βίαιταν καϊ φιΧοσοφιαν 
 νικηση τά βεΧτίω της Βιανοίας άηαηόντα, μακάριον μεν καϊ 
 
 Β ομονοητικον τον ενθάΒε βίον Βιά<γουσιν, iy κρατείς αυτών καϊ 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 333 
 
 Now when the Beloved continueth for awhile in this, and 
 Cometh near unto the Lover, touching him in the gymnasia 
 and other places where they meet, then at last the fountain of 
 that stream which Zeus, loving Ganymede, called by the name 
 of Himeros, floweth mightily toward the Lover, and part 
 thereof goeth down into him, and, when he is filled to over- 
 flowing, the other part runneth out : and even as the wind, or 
 a voice, leapeth back from the smooth rock and rusheth to the 
 place whence it came, so doth the Stream of Beauty return 
 unto the Beautiful One through the Eyes, which is the natural 
 way unto the Soul ; and when it is come thither, it giveth 
 the Soul wings — it watereth the passages of the feathers, and 
 causeth them to sprout ; and the Soul of the Beloved also is 
 filled with love. The Beloved loveth, but knoweth not whom, 
 nor hath understanding of what hath come to pass, for to 
 tell it ; but is like unto a man who hath been smitten with 
 disease of the eyes by another man, but cannot tell the cause 
 thereof; or like unto one who seeth himself in a glass, and 
 knoweth not that it is himself, so doth the Lover stand as a 
 glass before the Beloved : and when the Lover is present, the 
 Beloved ceaseth from the pain of Love, even as the Lover also 
 ceaseth ; and when the Lover is absent, the Beloved longeth 
 after him and is longed after, having Love-for-Love which is 
 the Image of Love, yet calling and deeming it not Love but 
 Friendship; and the Beloved desireth, even as the Lover 
 desireth, but less vehemently, to see, to touch, to kiss, to 
 embrace — and doeth this quickly thereafter, as is like ; con- 
 cerning which the lascivious Horse of the Lover's Soul hath 
 somewhat to say unto the Charioteer, and demandeth of him 
 a little enjoyment as the reward of many labours. But the 
 Horse of the Beloved hath nothing to say, but being swollen 
 with desire, and knowing not what he doeth, throweth his 
 arms round the Lover and kisseth him, greeting him as a dear 
 friend, and when, they are come close unto each other, is ready 
 to grant unto him all that he asketh ; while the fellow Horse, 
 obedient unto the Charioteer in all modesty and reasonable- 
 ness, withstandeth. Wherefore, if then the better parts of 
 the mind prevail, and lead the Soul into a constant way of 
 life and true wisdom, then are men, all the days of their life 
 here, blessed and at peace with themselves, having the mastery 
 
334 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 κόσμιοι oVt69, Βούλωσάμβνοι μβν φ κακία ψυχ7]ς iveyLyvero, 
 βλενθβρώσαντβς Be ω άρετψ τέλβυτησαντβ^ Be Βή, vTrowrepoi 
 καΐ €\αφροΙ yeyovoTefiy των τριών ττάλαισμάτων των ώ? 
 άληθώ<ζ ΌΧυμτΓίακών €v ν€νικήκασιν^ ου μeΐζov αηαθον ovTe 
 σωφροσύνη άνθρωττίνη ούτ€ Oeia μανία Βυνατη ττορίσαι 
 άνθρώττω. eav Be Βη Βιαίττ) φορτικωτέρα τ€ και άφιλοσόφω^ 
 
 C φιΧοτίμω Be 'χ^ρήσωνται τάχ αν ττου ev μέθαι<; ή τινι aXKy 
 άμe\eίa τω άκόΧάστω αύτοΐν υ'πoζυyίω \aβovτe τας ψύχρας 
 άφρούρους, ^uvayayovTe €ΐς ταντον, την υττο των ττοΧΧών 
 μακαριστην aϊpeσιv €ί\έτην τ€ και Bιe7Γpάξavτo' καϊ 
 Βιαττραξαμίνω το Χοιττον ηΒη 'χρώνται μ^ν avTrj, σττανία Be, 
 άτ€ ου ττάστ) BeBoyμeva Tjj Βιανοία 7rpaTT0VTe<;. φίΧω μ€ν 
 οΰν και τούτω, ήττον Be eκeίvωv αλληλοιν Βιά τ€ του 
 
 D βρωτος και εζω yevoμevω Bιάyoυσι, ττίστεις τας μeyίστaς 
 ήyoυμevω άΧΚήΧοιν ΒεΒωκεναι τε καϊ ΒεΒί'χθαι, α? ου θεμιτον 
 elvai Χύσαντας εις εγθραν ττοτε eXOelv. ev Be τη τεΧευτη 
 ατΓτεροι μεν, ώρμηκότες Βε τττερουσθαι εκβαίνουσι του 
 σώματος, ώστε ου σμικρόν αθΧον της ερωτικής μανίας 
 φέρονται' εις yap σκοτον και την υττο yής ττορείαν ου 
 νόμος εστίν ετι εΧθεΐν τοις κaτηpyμevoις ηΒη της ύττουρανίου 
 τΓορείας, άΧΧα φανον βίον Bιάyovτaς εύΒαιμονεΐν μετ 
 
 Ε άΧΧιίΧων ΤΓορευομενους, καϊ ομοιττερους έρωτος 'χάριν, όταν 
 yεvωvτaι, yevεσθaι. 
 
 Ύαυτα τοσαυτα, ω τταΧ, και θεια οΰτω σοι Βωρησεται η 
 Trap* εραστου φιΧία. ή Βε άττο του μη ερώντος οίκειότης, 
 σωφροσύνη θνητή κεκραμενη, θνητά τε καϊ φειΒωΧά οικονο- 
 μούσα, άνεΧευθερίαν υττο ττΧηθους ετταινουμενην ώς άρετην 
 267 τη φίΧη "^νχη εντεκοΰσα, εννέα χιΧιάΒας ετών ττερί yrjv 
 κυΧινΒουμενην αύτην καϊ υττο yής άνουν τταρεξει. 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 335 
 
 over themselves, doing all things in order, having brought into 
 bondage that part of the Soul wherein wickedness was found, 
 and having made that part free wherein virtue dwelleth ; and 
 after this life is ended, they rise up lightly on their wings, 
 having gained the victory in the first of the three falls at the True 
 Olympic Games, than which victory no greater good can the 
 Temperance of Man or the Madness from God bestow on Man. 
 
 But if any take unto themselves a baser way of life, 
 seeking not after true wisdom but after honour, perchance 
 when two such are well drunken, or at any time take no heed 
 unto themselves, their two licentious Horses, finding their 
 Souls without watch set, and bringing them together, make 
 choice of that which most men deem the greatest bliss, and 
 straightway do enjoy it ; and having once enjoyed it, they 
 have commerce with it afterward alway, but sparingly, for 
 they do that which is not approved of their entire mind. 
 
 Now these two also are friends unto one another, but in 
 less measure than those I before spake of, because they live 
 for a while in the bonds of love, and then for a while out of 
 them, and think that they have given and received the greatest 
 pledges betwixt each other, the which it is never allowed to 
 break and come to enmity one with another. When such do 
 end their life here and go forth from the ^bodx^_Jihfiy arej 
 without wings, but have ( a vehement des ire to_get wings ;' 
 which is no small recompense they receive for Madness of 
 Love. Wherefore they are not compelled to go down unto 
 the darkness and the journey under the Earth, seeing that 
 they have already made a beginning of the heavenly journey ; 
 but they pass their time in the light of day, and journey 
 happily together Lover and Beloved, and when they get wings, 
 of the same feather do they get them, for their Love's sake. 
 
 These are the gifts, dear boy — behold how many they are 
 and how divine ! — which the friendship that cometh from the 
 Lover shall bestow on thee : but the conversation of him who 
 is no Lover, being mingled with the temperance of this 
 mortal life, and niggardly dispensing things mortal, begetteth 
 in the Soul of his friend that Covetousness which the multi- 
 trujftpmisft, as Virtue, ατίγΙ cauaeth^ h pj h ρτ ;^«£|•ρτ^ „ J:CL^.g^ *^ ^^ ι 
 (tvoid of und£3:§tanding, Vou n(labout the Eartly and under the i 
 EariHTiSr a thousand years nine times told. -mJ^ 
 
336 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Observations on the Phaedrus Myth 
 
 I think it necessary, at the outset of my observations on 
 the Phaedrus Myth, to take notice — let it be brief — of the 
 tolerant, nay sympathetic, way in which Plato speaks (256 c-e) 
 of the βρωτίκη μανία of those who are not " true lovers." He 
 speaks eloquently of it as a bond which unites aspiring souls 
 in the after life. He speaks of those united by this bond as 
 getting wings of the same feather in Heaven for their love's sake. 
 His language is as sympathetic as the language in which 
 Dante expresses his own sympathy, and awakens ours, with a 
 very different pair of winged lovers — Francesca and Paolo 
 flying together like storm -driA^en birds in Hell.^ It is 
 astounding that Plato should allow himself to speak in this 
 way. The explanation offered by Thompson ^ does not enable 
 me to abate my astonishment : — The concluding portion of 
 the Myth, he tells us, " which stands more in need of apology," 
 ought to be considered in connection with the fact that the 
 entire Discourse is intended as a pattern of philosophical 
 Ehetoric, and is adapted, as all true Ehetoric must be, to the 
 capacity of the hearer — in this case, of Phaedrus, who is some- 
 what of a sensualist. It is still to me astounding that Plato 
 — even as dramatist in sympathy with the sensualism of one 
 of his dramatis personae, the youth to whom his " Socrates " 
 addresses this Khetorical Paradigm, if that is what the 
 Phaedrus Myth is^ — should have ventured to speak, as he 
 does here, of what he indeed elsewhere* condemns as un- 
 equivocally as Aristotle condemns it.^ 
 
 The reflection, in most cases a trite one, that even the 
 best men are apt to become tolerant of the evil which pre- 
 vails in the manners of their age, is hardly, in this case, a 
 trite reflection, for it is such an oppressively sad one. 
 
 ^ Inferno, v. 
 
 2 Phaedrus, p. 163. 
 
 3 I entirely dissent from the view that this Myth is merely a pattern of 
 philosophical Rhetoric ; and also from the consequential view (Thompson's 
 Introduction to Phaedrus, p. xix.), that it is mostly "a deliberate allegory," 
 unlike, it is added, other Platonic Myths in which the sign and the thing 
 signified are blended, and sometimes confused. See infra, p. 339. 
 
 * Laws, viii. 841 d. 
 
 5 E. N. vii. 5. 3. 1148 b 29. 
 
THE PHAEOBUS MYTH 337 
 
 II 
 
 In passing to the Phaedrus Myth (with which the Meno 
 Myth must be associated), we pass to a Myth in which the 
 " Deduction of the Categories of the understanding " occupies 
 perhaps a more prominent^place, by the side of the " Kepre- 
 sentation of (f3eag^o f~Eeasog^ than has been assigned to it 
 even in the Timaeus. 
 
 The mythological treatment of Categories of the Under- 
 standing stands on a different footing from that of " Ideas 
 of Keason " in this important respect, that it is not the only 
 treatment of which these Categories are capable. The Ideas 
 of Reason, Soul, Cosmos, and God, if represented at all, 
 must be represented in Myth ; and it is futile to attempt to 
 extract the truth of fact, by a rationalising process, out of 
 any representation of them, however convincing, as a repre- 
 sentation, it may appear to our deepest instinct. On the 
 other hand. Categories of the Understanding (e.g. the notions 
 of Substance and of Cause), though, as a priori conditions of 
 sensible experience, they cannot be treated as if they were 
 data of that experience, are yet fully realised, for what they 
 are, in that experience, and only in it. Hence, while their 
 a priori char acter may be set forth in Myth, the fact that, 
 unlike the Ideas of Reason, they are fully realised in sensible 
 experience, makes them also capable of logical treatment. 
 That they are capable of such treatment is obvious, when 
 one considers the advance, sound and great as measured by 
 influence in the physical sciences, which (Logic has brought 
 about in our interpretation of the Notion , or Category, of 
 'Pause, and that by discussions carried on quite_a^ia;rt from 
 the question of whether the ] ^otion is presentC^ priori ^ or is 
 of a posteriori ori gih. We may say, however, that treatment 
 of Categories of the Understanding tends to become less 
 mythological and more logical as time goes on ; but yet the 
 mythological treatment of them can never become obsolete — 
 it still remains the legitimate expression of a natural impulse, 
 the power of which — for evil — Kant recognises in his Tran- 
 scendental Dialectic. I call the mythological expression of 
 this impulse legitimates^ because it is mythological, and not 
 pseudo-scientific. 
 
 ζ 
 
33a THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 I take the Phaedrus Myth, along with the Meno Myth, 
 as an example of the Mythological Deduction of Categories 
 of the Understanding. The Eternal Forms seen by the Soul 
 in its prenatal life, as "remembered" in this life when 
 objects of sense present themselves, are Categories, although 
 the list of them is redundant and defective if we look at it 
 with Kant's eyes, which I do not think we need do. 
 
 But although the Phaedrus Myth deduces Categories, it 
 represents Ideas as well. Plato, as I have been careful to 
 point out, does not anywhere distinguish Categories and Ideas 
 formally ; and the Phaedrus Myth, in particular, is one of the 
 most complex, as well as comprehensive, in the whole list of 
 the Platonic Myths. It deduces Categories, sets forth the 
 Ideas of Soul, Cosmos, and God, is Aetiological and Eschato- 
 logical, and, though a true Myth, is very largely composed 
 of elements which are Allegories. Its complexity and com- 
 prehensiveness are indeed so great that they have suggested 
 the theory — that of During,^ with which, however, I cannot 
 agree — that the Myth is a Programme — a general view of a 
 whole consistent Eschatological Doctrine, which is worked out 
 in detail in the Gorgias, Phaedo, and BepuUic Myths.^ In 
 the Phaedrus Myth alone. During maintains, we have a 
 complete account of the whole History of the Soul — its 
 condition before incarnation, the cause of its incarnation, and 
 the stages of its life, incarnate, and disembodied, till it returns 
 to its original disembodied state. All this, he argues, is so 
 summarily sketched in the Phaedrus that we have to go to 
 the other Dialogues mentioned, in order to understand some 
 things in the Phaedrus rightly. In the Phaedrus Myth, in 
 short, we have "eine compendiarische Darstellung einer in 
 grosserer Ausfiirlichkeit vorschwebenden Conception." The 
 Phaedrus Myth thus dealing, for whatever reason, with 
 everything that can be dealt with by a Myth, we shall do 
 well not to separate its Deduction of Categories, or Doctrine 
 of άνάμνησις, too sharply from the other elements of the 
 composition. 
 
 1 Die eschat. Myth. Platos, p. 476 {Archiv fur Gesch. d. Philos. vi. (1893), 
 pp. 475 if.). 
 
 2 Cf. Jowett and Campbell's Republic, vol. iii. p. 468. " The attempts of 
 Numenius, Proclus, and others to connect the Myth of Er with those in Gorg., 
 Phaed., Phaedr., Tim., so as to get a complete and consistent view of Plato's 
 supra-mundane theories, only show the futility of such a method." 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 339 
 
 This Myth is part of the Discourse which Socrates 
 delivers, by way of recantation, in praise of Love. The non- 
 lover, indeed, is sane, but the madness of the lover is far 
 better than the other's sanity. Madness is the source of all 
 that is good and great in human effort. There are four kinds 
 of it ^ — (1) the Prophet's madness ; (2) the madness of the 
 Initiated ; (3) the madness of the Poet ; and (4) the madness 
 of the True Lover who is the True Philosopher. It is the 
 Transcendental History of the Soul as aspiring after this 
 True Love that is the main burden of the Myth. ; And here 
 let me say a few words, in passing, on the view maintained 
 by Thompson in his Introduction to the Phaedrus (p. xix.),^ 
 that this Myth is, for the most part, " a deliberate Allegory.'* 
 With this view I cannot agree. It ignores the fact that 
 a Myth is normally composed of elements which are Alle- 
 gories. The Chariot, with the Charioteer and two Horses, 
 is allegorical — it puts in pictorial form a result already 
 obtained by Plato's psychological analysis, which has dis- 
 tinguished Eeason, Spirit, and Appetite as " Parts of the 
 Soul." But if the Chariot itself is allegorical, its Path 
 through the Heavens is mythic. Allegory employed as rough 
 material for Myth is frequent in the work of the Great 
 Masters, as notably in the greatest of all Myths — in the 
 Divina Commedia. A striking instance there is the Pro- 
 cession, symbolic of the connection between the Old Dis- 
 pensation and the New, which passes before the Poet in the 
 Earthly Paradise {Purg. xxix. if.). The Visions of Ezekiel, 
 to which Dante is here indebted for some of his imagery, may 
 also be mentioned as instances of mythological compositions 
 built largely out of elements which are allegories. It is 
 enthusiasm and a living faith which, indeed, inspire the 
 mythopoeic or prophetic architect to build at all ; but his 
 creative enthusiasm is often served by a curious diligence in 
 the elaboration of the parts. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I have identified-^h^nrenataJ^jm^essi^ produced in the 
 Soul by t^ Eternal Fo^^Tseenin the Super-Celestial place 
 
 1 Phaedrus, 244. ^ Alluded to mpra, p. 336. 
 
340 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 with Categories, or a jpriori conditions of sensible experience, 
 and regarded the " recollection *' in this life of these Forms 
 seen in the prenatal life as equivalent to the effective opera- 
 tion of a priori Categories, or functions of the Understanding, 
 on the occasion of the presentation of objects of sense. I wish 
 now to meet an objection which may be brought against this 
 identification. Let us first look at the list of Eternal Forms 
 given in the Myth (247 c, and 250 b). They are αυτή 
 δικαιοσύνη — Justice Itself; αύτη σωφροσύνη — Temperance 
 Itself ; αληθής έΐΓίστημη — True Knowledge ; avro κάλλος — 
 Beauty Itself; and are described as οντά όντως — really ex- 
 istent, and άγ^ρώματοί re καΐ άσχ^ημάτ ιστοί καϊ άναφβΐς 
 ονσίαι — without colour, without shape, intangible. Now 
 Justice Itself and Temperance Itself in this list cannot be 
 called Categories of the Understanding. They would seem 
 to correspond rather to " Categorical Imperative." 'Αληθής 
 βτΓίστημη, ΟΏ. the other hand, does cover the ground occupied 
 by Categories of the Understanding, if it does not cover more. 
 ΈτΓίστημη is distinguished in the Meno (97, 98), as know- 
 ledge of the effect through its cause, from ορθή 86ξα, empirical 
 knowledge of the detached effect ; and the recognition of 
 necessary causal connection, thus identified with έττιστημη, is 
 expressly said (98 a) to be άνάμνησις. If we consider how 
 close the Myth of άνάμνησις in the Meno (81 b) stands to 
 the Fhaedrus Myth, we are bound to conclude that the αληθής 
 έΐΓίστημη, mentioned as one of the ούσίαι seen by the Soul 
 in the νττερουράνιος τόττος, covers the a priori Category of 
 Cause, and, it is fair to add, the other Categories of the 
 Understanding by the use of which, within the limits of 
 possible experience, scientific truth (έττιστήμη) is attained. 
 Further, while the presence or αληθής έττιστημη among the 
 Eternal Essences or Forms entitles us to speak of a priori 
 Categories as domiciled in the ύττβρουράνιος τόττος^ of the 
 Fhaedrus Myth, we need not quarrel with the presence of αύτη 
 δικαιοσύνη, αύτη σωφροσύνη, and αύτο κάλλος in a list of 
 Categories ; the distinction between Categories of the Under- 
 standing and Ideas of Eeason, as I have pointed out, is not 
 provided for in Plato's philosophical language, and it is to 
 
 ^ These are "Categories which are already in things, " to use Professor 
 Pringle-Pattison's expression {Scottish Philosophy, p. 140). 
 
a priori princi^es~:to- bear -^oa-Joij individual experience i 
 
 explained by ( g.n Aetiolo^ical Mym tellin g ho \\( |the Soul ii 
 
 1 its^ jir^atal state goes round , so f ar as it is not hinder ed by 
 
 THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 341 
 
 be noticed that, in describing these Eternal Essences or Forms 
 of Justice, Temperance , and Be auty, he describes them as if 
 they were CategoqesT^empfc ywithout^en se " — that is, empty 
 except as "recollected" in this life on the occasion of the 
 presence of objects of sense ; just as in the parallel passage in 
 the Meno (81 c), he speaks of the prenatal knowledge of 
 apeTTj as " recollected " in this life. It will be fair, then, I 
 think, to call the list of Essences or Forms in the Phaedrus 
 Myth a list of Categories of the Understanding (included 
 under αληθής βιτίστημη), and of certain other a priori Forms 
 described as if they were Categories. As in the Timaeus, so 
 in the Phaedrus Myth, the fact (ascertained, we may suppose, 
 by Plato as by Kant through introspection) that man brings 
 
 is 
 
 I e arthward inclina tionr with £he revolut ion of the outermost/ 
 \ H eavenly sphere/from the back, or (c onvex surfa cp, ^f which 
 is seent^^^vTrepovpavco^ τοττος — the irehiov αληθείας, where 
 the tru e food of the mind grows. The Eternal Truths which 
 grow on this Plain are apprehended by the gods perfectly; 
 by other Souls, which are still within the κύκλος τής 
 ^βνβσεως, only in an interrupted and partial view ; but, 
 we may suppose, in__godlike manner by human , SfMa-jghigh 
 have been finally ( purifi ed a ndireleased from the flesh\Jor ev^ 
 In proportion as a human Soul has " recollection " of these 
 truths while it is in the flesh, in that proportion is it purified. 
 Among the Eternal Essences of the ντΓβρονράνιος τόττος the 
 αύτο κάλλος is that which is most easily " remembered," 
 because it is more app arent in its visi ble cop ie^ than the 
 other Essences are in TbKeirs . (Phaedrus, 250 d). The Eternal 
 Beauty manifests itself to the eye in beautiful things more 
 clearly than the Eternal Justice, for instance, manifests itself 
 to the "moral sense" in actions, laws, and institutions. 
 "Ερως, awakened by the sight of "beautiful things," is the 
 form taken by this " recollection " of the Eternal Beauty — an 
 impulse, at once emotional and intellectual, of the whole man, 
 by which he is carried on, through the apprehension of that 
 Essential Principle whieh is most easily apprehended, to the 
 apprehension also of the Essential Principles of Conduct and 
 
342 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Science. Hence 
 cally conv ertible 
 This 
 
 6ρω9, αναμνησις 
 term s,•^ and mean 
 of 
 
 and φιλοσοφία are practi- 
 
 a 7nor intellectuali s Dei. 
 
 world/' 
 
 enthusiastic love of the beautiful "intelligible 
 sharpening recollection till all forgetfulness is overcome^and 
 the So ul is made perfectly pure, and(i s redeemed f rom th^^^) 
 for ever — this φιλοσοφία (to sum up all in a single word^bemg 
 a nisus which engages the whole man in one concentrated 
 endeavour, can only be felt and affirmed, cannot be explained. 
 It is the very Life of the Subject of all experience, and 
 cannot be treated as if it were an Obje ct to be explained 
 scientifically in its place amon^_other Objects like itself. ^ w-ir</if>^ 
 
 The Philosopher as conceived b ν Pl ato |is an ardent Lover, j^ 
 He lives all his earthly life in a trembling hope, anH, out 
 of his hope, sees vision s^ajidjproj^^iBsig^^ ^"^^IF 
 
 Plato, keenly appreciating ffiep^^*with which expres-^^ 
 sion of thought or feeling reacts onjbhoug ht gr feelings spares 
 ^o^ins in showing how to give artistic form to^Myth, the 
 natural expression (if only as by-product) of tlie^ enthusiastic 
 philosophic ^isu^ after self-realisation or purifica tion. This 
 is the justification of the artistic Myth, for the construction 
 of which Plato supplies models — that it helps to moderate 
 and refine and direct the aspirations, the hopes, the fears, the 
 curiosity, of which Myth is the natural expression. It will 
 be remembered what importance is attached, in the scheme of 
 education sketched in the EepuUic, to " good form " in the 
 mode of expressing not only literary meaning and musical 
 eeling, but also athletic effort. The form of expression is, as 
 t were, the vessel which contains and gives contour to the 
 aracter which expresses itself. We must be careful to see 
 tRat we have in our system of education good models of 
 expression into which, as into moulds, young character may 
 be poured. Apart from its bearing on education, the whole 
 question of the reaction of expression on that which expresses 
 itself is an interesting one, and may be studied in its biological 
 rudiments in Darwin's work on the Expression of the Emotions 
 in Man and Animals. 
 
 1 So Dante {Conv. iii. 12), says, "Filosofia e uno amoroso uso di Sapieiiza " : 
 Amor is the Form, and Sapienza the Subject Matter of Filosofia {Conv. iii. 13, 
 14). So also Wordsworth, substituting "Poetry" for "Philosophy" (Pref. to 
 Lyrical Ballads), " Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge : it is 
 the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science." 
 
THE PEAEDEUS MYTH 
 
 I said that we should do well, considering the complexity 
 of the Phaedrus Myth, not to detach its Deduction of Cate- 
 gories or doctrine of άνάμνησι,ς too much from the general 
 context. The doctrine of ανάμνησι^; is treated by Plato, in 
 the Phaedrus and Meno, as inseparable from the doctrine of 
 the prenatal existence and immortality of the Soul, and is 
 closely bound up with the Orphic doctrine of κάθαρσις and 
 his own version of it— ^the_doctrine._of_phi^^ It 
 
 is impossible, then, to pledge Plato to belief in the literal truth 
 of the doctrine of άνάμνησι^, unless we are prepared to go 
 
 with Zeller thelength of thiT^VirLg th^^t. ]y. ia in parnpst in 
 
 believing that fi^ ^ g SouWa ctu a ll y exis^dT as a se paratej - porson 
 before it w^:5" Tborn into this bodjs^and wriTpassThrough a 
 serTes of incarnations ai'ter thedeath of this body. " If it be 
 impossible," writes Zeller {Plato, pp. 404 ff., Eng. Tr.), "to 
 imagine the soul as not living, this must equally hold good 
 of the future and of the past ; its existence can as little begin 
 with tliis-lu!s_as_end with it. S trictly speakingC it ca n/nev e^ 
 havJv begun at_ all ; Jfor the soul being itself the source of all 
 motion, from what c ould its m otion have proceeded ? Accord- 1 
 ingly Plato hardly ever mentions immortality without alluding i 
 to pre-existence, and his expressions are as explicit and { 
 decided about the one as the other. In his opinion they 
 stand or fall together, and he^uses them alike to explain the 
 facts of our spiritual life. /We therefore cannot doubt that 
 he was thorowghly in earnest in his assumption of a pre- 
 e ^istence . xAxia. that this pre-existence had no beginning is | 
 so often asserted by him ^ that a mythical representation like I 
 that of the Timaeus can hardly be allowed any weight to the 
 contrary. We must, nevertheless, admit the possibility that in 
 his later years he did not strictly abide by the consequences of 
 his system, nor definitely propound to himself whether the soul 
 had any historical beginning, or only sprang to its essential 
 nature from some higher principle. / 
 
 " If the two poles of this ideal circle, Pre-existence and 
 Immortality, be once established, there is no evading the j 
 doctrine of Eecollection which lies between them ; and the I 
 notions of Transmigration and of future rewards and punish- 
 ments appear, the moje we consider them, to be seriously 
 
 1 Phaedrus, 245 c, D ; Meno, 86 a. 
 
 X '^0^'^ 
 
344 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 meant. With regard to EecoUection, Plato speaks in the 
 above-cited passages so dogmatically and definitely, and the 
 theory is so bound up with his whole system, that we must 
 unconditionally reckon it among the doctrinal constituents of 
 that system. The doctrine is an inference which could not 
 well be escaped if once the pre-existence of the soul were 
 admitted ; for an existence of infinite duration must have left 
 in the soul some traces which, though temporarily obscured in 
 our consciousness, could not be for ever obliterated. But it is 
 also in Plato's opinion the only solution of a most important 
 scientific question : the, question as to j^he,^pfίi=^p^'l•^^\^*y of 
 i ndependent ^ inq uir y — of thought (transcending sensuous per- 
 ception. Uur thought could not get beyond the Immediate 
 and the Actual ; we could not seek for what is as yet unknown 
 to us, nor recognise in what we find the thing that we sought 
 for, if we had faotVnconsciously possessed jt jjglg ^w^ 
 and were conscious of it.^ We could/ ^rm{n o conception) of 
 Ideas , of tEe~~eternal ^ssenc^ (6ΐ things wHch is hid den /from 
 our perception, if we had not attained to the intuition of 
 tliese in aQormer existen^J^ The attempt of a modern work 
 to e xclu de the theory of Eec oUec tion from the essential 
 doctrines of the Platonic system ^ is therefore_entirely opposed 
 to the teaching of Plato. The arguments for the truth and 
 necessity of this doctrine are not indeed, f^com our point of 
 view, difficult to refute ; but it is obvious that from Plato's 
 they are seriously meant." 
 
 I venture to think that the doctrine^ of άνάμνησίς, in 
 itself, and in its Rp■tt^η σ^ is T|r>t intpnrlp.rl byPln.tn to be taken 
 literally — that/lt is not Dogma but Myth?^ This view, for 
 which I may appeal to the authority of Leibniz and Coleridge,* 
 
 1 Meno, 80 d if. 
 
 2 Phaedo, 73 c if. and 76 d. 
 
 ^ Teichmiiller, Studien zur Gesch. d. Beqriffe, pp. 208 if. 
 ^ Leibniz {Nouv. Ess. Avant-propos) describes the Platonic doctrine of 
 
 Reminiscence as toute fahuleuse ; and Coleridge {Biog.J^L• ch. 22), speaking of 
 
 "Vordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Ιτ ϊιύιι orta liti/ from Recollections of Early 
 
 'hildhoodf^ys : ' * The od g ^was inteni Jan f o£sTTo1hjei^ prs as had been accustomed 
 
 ivatchOfcLe flux and reflux of their inrnosTrnturtB, to venture at times into 
 
 e twilighfT-ealms oX^onsciousne'sg;" and ^ i eeFa deep interest in modes of 
 inmost being, to whicn they know that the attributes of time and space are 
 inapplicable and alien, but which yet cannot be conveyed, save in symbols of 
 time and space. For such readers the sense is sufficiently plain, and they will be 
 as little disposed to charge Mr. Wordsworth with believing the Platonic pre- 
 existence in the ordinary interpretation of Avords, as I am to believe that Plato 
 " imself ever meant or taught it." 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH/^ 345 
 
 ί 
 
 seems to me to t)e borne out b y the passage in the Men^ 
 dealing with άνάμνησι,ς : άνάμνησί<ζ is presented there, in 
 accordance with Orphic belief, as becoming clearer and clearer 
 at each incarnation, till the soul at last attains to the blessed 
 life of a Βαί^ιων. Can it be maintained that Plato is in 
 earnest with all the Orphic details of this passage ? — and, if 
 not with all, with any ? It is to be noted, too, that Socrates 
 ends by recommending his tale about άνάμνησίς entirely on 
 practical grounds, as likely to make us more ready to take th e 
 trouble of seeking after knowledge, /^ ere we ar e U n this il — ^ .J 
 world) he says in effect, with Imen^lSgulties.j which perh aps f i^'t^ 
 ive us. How are we to sa^^mirsel^s from scepticism . iiff^ 
 
 decepe u s. How are we to save^^' TOfse T^s from scepticism . ^.^.^ 
 and accidie ? ^^ } j ^7 .^, g^^^^^^ firm ly (that our mental I^Y-^ 
 f acultie s /§o^ not/deceive usJ II^ience cannot establish in us \jp^ 
 
 the beliet tKat our 6^ental^feculties) do not deceive us ; for our t ^ ^ ^ 
 mental faculties are the conditions of science. The surest 
 way of gettin g^ to belie v^r^^that our mental fa culti es do not / 
 deceive us is, of course, to use them : but if the absence ov 
 scientific proof~of their trustw"orbhiness should ever give us^^— 
 anxiety, the persuasiveness of a Myth may comibrt us ; that 
 is, a Myth may put us in the mood of ri^argui7ig\ about our 
 mental faculties, but believing in themr~^~lVieno, i n argu- 
 me ntative m ood, a sks h ow it is possible to i nvestigate fa thing 7 
 about which one knows a bsolute ly nothing — in tnis case. 
 Virtue, about which Socrates professes tokaow nothing 
 himself, and has shown that Men o kno^^ no thing. One's 
 investigation, Meno argues, having no object whatever before 
 it, might hit by accident on some truth — but how is one to 
 know that it is thg^j truth one wants ? To this Socrates 
 replies : I understand your meaning, Meno. But don't you 
 see what a verba l sort of argument it is that youaj^ J^itro-v 
 ducing ? You mean " that one can't investigat/eith erjwhatj 
 o ne kno ws or what one_does noriknoy ; for (what one k nows 
 one knows/and investigation is unnecessary ; and what one 
 does not know one does not know, and how can one investi- 
 gate one knows not what ? " 
 
 Meno. Exactly ; and you think it is a good argument ? 
 
 Socrates. No, I don't^ 
 
 M. Why, pray ? 
 
 1 Meno, 81. 
 
346 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 S. I will tell you. I have heard from men and women 
 who are wise_concerning divine things — 
 M. What have you heard ? 
 
 S. A Tale, true I believe, and great and glorious. 
 
 if. What wasit ? WhoJipJ^ou? 
 
 r^ Those ^pnes^ and^priestes^ whose continual study it 
 
 able to give an account of (the thing s V hlch are th eir 
 
 andlilso Pindar, and many other divin e poets. And 
 
 ale is this — iFTs for you to consider whether you think 
 
 ^jjt a true Tale: they say, "That the Soul of Man is immortal, 
 
 Oaff^^BJid to-day she co meth to her End, which they call Death ; 
 
 V^"^ and then afterwards is she born again, but perisheth never. 
 
 yjyt ^ Wherefore it behoveth us to go through our lives observing 
 
 ^jL^/-;^' religion alway: for the Souls of them from whom Persephone 
 
 ^ hath received the price of ancient Sin, she sendeth hack to the 
 
 ^&λΓ^ light of the Sun above in the ninth year. These he they who 
 
 ' iJO become noUe 'Icings and men swift and strong and mighty in 
 
 Q'^J wisdom, and are called Blesse d of them thatj come after unto all 
 
 generations^ 
 
 Since the Soul, then, Socrates continues, i s immort al, and 
 
 N|\ has often been incarnate, and has seen both the things here 
 
 i I > and the things in Hades, and all things, there is nothing which 
 
 she has noTlearnt^ No wonder, thenTtHat she is able, of herself, 
 
 to recall to memory whatshe f ormerlx k ne w ^ ibQutJ irt ue or 
 
 anything else ; Tor, ag^'S ap^f^ is all of one_c ommon st ocj: and 
 
 kind, and the Soul has^arnt all thing s, th ere is no reason why, 
 
 tarting~firom Tier recollection of but one thing (this is what is 
 
 lied "learning"), a man should .not,^ himself, discover „all 
 
 ther t hings, i f only he hav^goodjcourage)an^^hij'k^ot inquiry 
 
 for, according to this account, all inq uir/ and lea rning is 
 
 " remembering." So, we must not be led away by your verbal 
 
 argument. It would make us idle ; for it is an argument that 
 
 slack people_Jike. But my account of the matter stirs people 
 
 up to^ork and inquire. Believing~it to be the true account, 
 
 I ajai willing, along with you, to inquire what Virtue is.^ 
 
 The practical lesson to be drawn from the Myth contained 
 
 ,^Λ^η this passage is indicated by Socrates a little further on : ^ — 
 
 I There are things, he says, in the Doctrine, or Myth, of 
 
 iscence on which it is hardly worth while to insist, if 
 1 Meno, 80 d-81 e. ^ j^^^^^ §6 a, b, c. 
 
 
 V 
 
 \r 
 
 γ 
 
 ^ 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 34Τ 
 
 they are challenge d ; but there is one thing in its teaching 
 which is worth maintaining against all comers — that, if we 
 think that we ought t o investig ate wha^^ssie-danot know, we 
 are better men, more courageou s aniViess slothfiji, than if we 
 think that what we oonot know is something which it is 
 neither possible to ascertain nor right to investigate. 
 
 Zeller's reaso n for maintaining that the doctrine of 
 άνάμνησις, set forth in this passage and in the Fhaedrus 
 Myth, is to be taken literally seems to be that the doctrine 
 is propounded by Plato | as the sole explanation of what he 
 certainly accepted as a fact — the presence of a n a vrior i 
 element in experience, and. moreover, is an explanation involv- 
 ing the doctrine o f Ide aa which, it is urged, Plato wishes to 
 be taken l iterall y. "^ 
 
 I do not think that because introspection makes Plato 
 accept as a fact the presence of an a vrio ri element in experi- 
 ence, it follows that even the only "explanation" which 
 occurs to him of the fact is regarded by him as " scientific." 
 The "explanation" consists in thei assumption of Eternal 
 Ideas which are "recollected" from a prenatal expe rience on 
 fhe occasion of the pres entat ion, in this life, of sensible objects 
 " resembling '^them. I go the length of th inkin g that the 
 Eternal Ideas, as assumed in this " explanation," are, like their 
 domicile, the Plain o f Truth, creations of^ mythology.^ It is^ . JJWn•- 
 because Aristotle either ^ould not or would not see this, that. 
 
 '\f 
 
 his criticism of the do ctrine of Id eas ^ ^s a c oupmanqu4 . ' / j 
 Milton's poem De Idea Platonica quemaamodum Aristoteles 
 intellexit seems to me to express so happily the state of the 
 case — that the doctrine of Eternal Ideas set forth by Plato in 
 Myth is erroneously taken up by Aristotle as Dogma — that I 
 venture to quote it here in full : ^ — 
 
 ^ This view of the Ideas/ as we have them in the Phaedrus Mvt h is, of course, 
 ajaije consistent with an o rthod ox view of their place in Logi c. I In Log ic the 
 Qi5^) a.Te scientific p oints of vie-vy ^Sy means of whicITpI ienomena ^are br ought into 
 natural ^groups a nd explained in their causal cont ext. USnswering το these 
 scientific points of view are objectiveiy vali d Laws of .N aiure . Coutura t {de Pl at. 
 Mythis, p. 81),'after pointing to certain ditieren ces in the accounts given m the 
 Tim.^ Phae do, Hspilbl., 'dlld Ibuphistes, respectively^ of the Ιδέαι, ends with the 
 remark t hat^we might complain o f ''inconsistency " Avere it'^oU tliat the whole 
 doctrine of ίό'^αι is mythical." This,T think7 i s going too far. I t is interesting 
 to UP t8' IlIar TjahTe f C?07M^ li. 5)"draws a close j5arallel between the Platonic ίδέαι 
 and ' ' (Tody**T"so far as the parallel go , e s. the former will belong to "mythology" 
 equally wit h the lat t er. • 
 
 2 Met. M. ^ * '^ Masson's Poetical Works of John Milton, vol. iii. p. 76. 
 
348 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Dicite, sacrorum praesides nemorum deae, 
 Tuque Ο noveni perbeata numinis 
 Memoria mater, quaeque in immenso procul 
 Antro recumbis otiosa Aeternitas, 
 Monumenta servans, et ratas leges Jovis, 
 Coelique fastos atque ephemeridas Deum, 
 Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine 
 Natura solers finxit humanum genus, 
 Aeternus, incorruptus, aequaevus polo, 
 Unusque et universus exemplar Dei ? 
 Haud ille, Palladis gemellus innubae, 
 Interna proles insidet menti Jovis ; 
 Sed, quamlibet natura sit communior, 
 Tamen seorsus extat ad morem unius, 
 Et, mira ! certo stringitur spatio loci : 
 Seu sempiternus ille siderum comes 
 Caeli pererrat ordines decemplicis, 
 Citimumve terris incolit Lunae globum ; 
 Sive, inter animas corpus adituras sedens, 
 Obliviosas torpet ad Lethes aquas ; 
 Sive in remota forte terrarum plaga 
 Incedit ingens bominis arcbetypus gigas, 
 Et diis tremendus erigit celsum caput, 
 Atlante major portitore siderum. 
 Non, cui profundum caecitas lumen dedit, 
 Dircaeus augur vidit bunc alto sinu ; 
 Non bunc silenti nocte Pleiones nepos 
 Vatum sagaci praepes ostendit cboro ; 
 Non bunc sacerdos novit Assyrius, licet 
 Longos vetusti commemoret atavos Nini, 
 Priscumque Belon, inclytumque Osiridem ; 
 Non ille trino gloriosus nomine 
 Ter magnus Hermes (ut sit arcani sciens) 
 Talem reliquit Isidis cultoribus. 
 At tu,i perenne ruris Academi decus, 
 (Haec monstra si tu primus induxti scbolis) 
 Jam jam poetas, urbis exules tuae, 
 Eevocabis, ipse fabulator maximus ; 
 Aut institutor ipse migrabis foras. 
 
 To put the matter briefly : I regard, the whole doctrine of 
 άνάμνησις, and of jBea L• qua involved in that doctrine, as an 
 A etiologica l l^th — plausible, comforting, and encouraging — 
 
 1 Prof. Masson (o.c. iii. 527) says: '* Tu is, of course, Plato; and bere, it 
 
 seems to me, Milton intimates at the close" that he does not be lieve that the 
 
 Aristotelian repr esentation of Plato's Idea, which be has been burTBsqu ing in the 
 
 poem, is a true rendering'of ^Plato '^rear meaning. If it were" so —it Plato bad 
 
 [really tau ght a ny s uch monstr osity ^ tBen7 "^c. I rather tT^ jnk non^ mentators on 
 
 " the^poenj haVFmiS?df! its num^-ous character, and apposed Milton^mself to be 
 
 ling fault with Plato." '""" 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 349 
 
 to explain the fact that Man_JftndsJhm]i^e]fo^A-^o^ iii 
 which he can get on. The Myth is a protest against the 
 Ignava Ratio of Menq and his like — the sophistry which 
 excuses inacti vity b y proving,, to _the satisfaction of the inac- 
 tive, that successful advance in knowledge and morality is 
 impossible. 
 
 IV 
 
 Phaedrus, 248 D, Ε 
 
 The fact that the Philosopher and the Tyrant are respect- 
 ively first and last in a list of nine can be explained only by 
 reference to the importance attached by Plato to 9x9x9 = 
 729, which, in RepuU. 587 D, Ε f see A dam's no^es), marks the 
 superiority of the P hjlosop hep/oy^ the Tyrant in respect of 
 Happiness. The number 72p^had a great vogue in la ter 
 times. Plutarch, in his de animae procreatione e Timaeo, . 
 ch. 31, makes it the number of the Sun, which we know from l 
 the defac. in orhel unae, ch. 28, stands for νους : κατ αύτον Be 
 τον ήΧίον θ' καϊ κ καΐ yjr^ όστις αμα τ€ τβτρά^ωνός τ€ καΐ 
 κύβος εστί. It is also involved in the " mysterie of the 
 I Septenary, or number seven," which is of tw o kind s — η ivjp^^^ 
 ΒβκάΒος ββΒομάς, ί.β., ^β 7 which comes inKheseries 1, 2, J 
 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, l Oj and ή βκτος ΒβκάΒος εθ^/ζ,α^ "^ich 
 is"^EEe sevenj^h t erm from unity in the series 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, 
 243, 729. This is both/a square^ ( = incor porea l substance) 
 and a cube ( = corporeal ^^ubstance), ^.e.^7 X 27 and 9x9 
 X 9 both= 729. This is worked out by Philo in a passage ι 
 of his Cosmopoeia Mosaica, quoted by Dr. Henry More in his I 
 Defence of the Moral Cahhala, ch. ii. p. 164 (ed. 1662); and 
 More's application is worth quoting : " Seven hundred and i 
 twenty-nine is made either by squaring of twenty-seven, or | 
 cuhicallg multiplying of nine, and so is both cuhe and square, f 
 Corporeal, and Incorporeal. Whereby is intimated that the 
 World shall not be reduced in the Seventh day to a mere 
 
 spiritual ^ππβίβ^ατίρυ tn an ^^ςη'τ-' ρηγ^η? ^,η η(1ί|•|ίπτΊ h^t that 
 
 there shall be ^ cohabitation of thd ^ Spirifr fwit h yJ Q in a 
 mystical or moral sens^ and that~God wilfpitciynis Tent 
 amongst us. Then shall be settled everlasting Eignteousnes 
 
350 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 1 
 
 ^nd ( rooted in Jhg^-^Ei g^i, so long as mankind shall inhabit 
 upon the face tnere of/'T^^ *^ 
 
 Again, Dante makia 9 1 the number ofC feeatr ic^ She was 
 ^- in her ninth jear when he first saw her (Vuirlmiova, 2); his 
 , first greeting he recei Yed from her ni^e__jOar^/ afterwards at 
 
 O^- ^'the ninth hour of ^e_da^ (F. iVi, 3); and she depa rte^^his 
 σ^ life on the nintli day of the nintji month of the year, 
 ^\λ] according to the Syrian style (F^ 2V! 30): — " Questo numero," 
 /CA ' he concludes (V. Κ 30), "fu ella me desima ; per similitudine 
 dico, e cio ihtendo cosi : Lo numero del tre e la radice del 
 nove, peroccHe^~senza numero altro, per se medesimo moltipli- 
 cato, fa nove, siccome vedemo manifestamente che tre via tre 
 fa nove. Dunque se il tre e fattore per se medesimo del nove, 
 e lo fattore dei miracoli per βέ medesimo έ tre, cio^ Padre, 
 Figliuolo e Spirito Santo, li quali sono tre ed uno, questa donna 
 fu accompagnata dal numero del nove a dare ad intendere, que 
 ella era un nove, cioe un miracolo, la cui radice έ solamente la 
 abile Trinitade^ With this may be compared a passage in 
 Convivio, iv. 24, in which Dante, referring to Cicero, de Senectute 
 {§ 5), as authority, says that Plato died aged eighty-one (cf. 
 Toynbee, Oante Diet, art. "Platone," at the end, for a quotation 
 from Seneca, Έρ. 58, to the same effect); and adds: "e io 
 •credo che, se Cristo non fosse stato crucifisso, e fosse vivuto lo 
 spazio che la sua vita potea secondo natura trapassare, egli 
 sarebbe all' ottantuno anno di mortale corpo in eternale 
 trasmutato." 
 
 The contrast between ' the celestial mise en scdne of the 
 History of the Sou l represented in the Fhaedrus Myth, and 
 the terrestrial scenery of the great Eschatological Myths in the 
 Phaedo, Gorgias, and BepuUic, is a pomt'on^" which some re- 
 marks may be offered. 
 
 In the Fhaedrus Myth we are mainly concerned with (the Fall 
 and Ascension of human Soula through the HeavenlySpheres/ 
 
 rintermediate between the Eartji and the ireBlov ^aXTjSela^. 
 Reference to the^ublunary "Kegion which includes Tartarus, 
 the !^iain of T^etS gland the Earthly Paradise (Islands of the 
 Blesse^rTrue Sur^ce of the Earth, τα irepl ηην = ovpav6<;), is 
 
THE PHAEDEUS MYTH 
 
 351 
 
 slight and distant. In the Fhaedrus Myth we have light 
 wings and "a TFcurad iso ; in the three other Myths mentioned, 
 plodding feet and an Inferno and a Purgatorio. 
 
 This distinction answers to a real difference in the sources 
 on which Plat o drew for his History of the S oul. On the one 
 hand, he was indebted to the P^1bhagorean^_Orphics, who put 
 καθάρσια in the f orefront o f_their eschatology. On the other 
 hand, he had at his disposal, for the selection of details, the 
 less refinfid^I^γt hol•^ y• of the j caTa^a(7L^^,iels-lAi^ov, as taught Ι^^Νλ^ 
 by t h^TPHft s ^^ <y φ^ 
 
 TEe^ esc"hatology oi tne i^ytnagorean-- Orphics may be 
 broadly characterised as celestial and astronomical. The Soul 
 falls from her native_place in the Highest Heaven, through 
 the Heavenly Spheres, to herJtot_incar nation on Ea rth. By 
 means of a series of l^journs in Hade^, and re-incarnations on 
 Earth (the details^fjwlicfi'^e mostl y taken fro m the myth- 
 )L•^^oΐth§,U££!;τάβ£Lσιy^k "AiBov), me is^mrifie d^rom th e 
 tain±y of fhe nesh. When, at last, she returns to her native 
 place in the Highest Heaven, passing, in the upward flight of 
 her chariot, through the Heavenly Spheres, as through Statio ns 
 or Doors. 
 
 (The e arlies t example which has come down to us of this 
 celestial esc hatologj • is that which m eets \^ in t he pass age 
 with wh ich Parmenides I be gins J his Poem . Parmenides goes -i ^ 
 up in a chariot accompanied by t he Dfl ,iightp,r i; of the Sui^ 1^^ 
 he rides t hrough the Gate of Justj u^jwhere the pa ths of Da y 
 and Nig ht have their Ipafe^ j ; an d co mes to/ i he Eeg ion of 
 Lightj^^ere Wisdom receives fiim.^ 
 
 t to this celestia Lfischatolog y, the eschatology 
 of thfiU Sd^s jdenou nced in the RejpuUic may be described 
 as tfe rrestn^ r itll Souls go to a place on Earth, or under the 
 (EartH^to be judged, and the good are sent to the right to 
 l^ternal^ ^|easting j {μέθη αιώνιος, Rep. 363 d), and the wicked 
 to the lefuTtoTie for ever in the Pit of Slime. Of the true 
 καθάρσια effected by a secular process of penance and 
 philosophic aspiration these ffriests ha ve no concepti^. The 
 
 1 363 c, D ; 364 Β if. 
 
 2 See Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, pp. 183 if. ; and Dieterich, Eine 
 Mithrasliturgie, p. 197. The passage does not express the views of Parmenides 
 himself ; but is borrowed from the Pythagorean Orphics, probably for the mere 
 purpose of decoration. The SouPchariots of the Ph^edriLs Myth are derived from 
 the same source. 
 
 5?^ 
 
 iJW"' 
 
 η. 
 

 352 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 only κάθαρσις which comes within the range of their thought 
 is that effected, once for all in this life, by ritual observance. 
 The κάθαρσις thus effected in this life is all that is needed 
 to bring the Soul to the very " earthly " Paradise of their 
 eschatology. 
 
 Although Plato leaves us in the Gorgias with only the 
 Islands of the Blessed and the Pit of Tartarus of this 
 terrestrial eschatology, he makes it plain in the Phaedo 
 Myth, not to "mention the Timaeus and the Phaedrus Myth, 
 jj^^iL Jihg• qiltim ate destination of _^he virtuous eoul/is not any 
 ^rrestr i al Paradise~^of pensual deH^ht fi (which_might_yyg^l_be 
 Igif'ge^ured by /m er d ^ritu al purific ation! but a Celestial 
 V)y^ \£ Paradise, to whicIT ^e rur^~ Intelligenc^ rises by its own 
 ^^ strenuo us eff ort, recallin g to memory m ore and more clearly 
 \y,y^ theffiternalTrut^ which it ardently loves. 
 
 - '^' it was through what may be called its astronomical side, 
 
 and not through that side which reflects the mythology of 
 the κατάβασίς 6t9 '' AlB ov, that the Platonic eschatology 
 influenced subsequent religious thoug ht an d pra^ 
 doctrine of κάθαρσ ις effected by per sonal effort ψ a Cosmo^ 
 gove rned by Goj, which, after all, is the gre^ t-^j^ontribution 
 made by Plato to the religioiitoiWugktr' and practice of 
 Europe, f ound ity ap propriate rag^^jSnthe large astronomy 
 which meets us in the TiTr^sbmfd^TPhaedrus — an astronomy 
 which was afterwards^eMborated, with special reference to the 
 aerial and aetherealT habitats of Daemons and disembodied^,^^' 
 human Souls;'iy the Stoics no less than by the PlatonistsT 
 .Dieterich, in his Eine Mithrasliturgie (1903), mentions the 
 Stoic Posidonius, Cicero's teacher, as the writer who did most 
 to unite the Pythagorean and Platonic tradition with the 
 doctrines of the Stoa. As result of his accommodation of 
 Platonic eschatology to Stoic doctrine, reference ^ to a sub- 
 terranean Hades disappears, and the History of the Soul after 
 Death is that of its άνάβασίς from Earth to Air, from Air to 
 Aether, and through the Spheres of the Planets to the Sphere 
 of the Fixed Stars. The substitution of άνάβασις for κατά- 
 βασι<ζ, even in the case of the Souls of the wicked, con- 
 nects itself closely with the " physical science " of the Stoics. 
 In the Phaedrus Myth the Soul has wings and flies up ; but 
 ^ EiTie Mithrasliturgie t pp. 79 and 202. 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 353 
 
 the Stoics give a " scientific " reason for its ascent, — the 
 " matter " of which it is made is so rare and light that it rises 
 of necessity when it is separated from the terrestrial body. 
 To Posidonius, and through him to Plato and the Pythagorean 
 Orphics, Dieterich ^ carries back the eschatology of Cicero's 
 Somnium Scipionis and Tusculanae Disputationes,^ and of 
 Seneca's Letter to Marcia^ — an eschatology in which the Soul 
 is represented as ascending through Heavenly Stations ; while 
 the astronomy of the pseudo- Aristotelian irepl κόσμου, — a 
 work of the first century after Christ, translated in the 
 second century by Apuleius, — he contends, is essentially that 
 of Posidonius. The latest embodiment of the Type first 
 made known to us in the Poem of Parmenides and the 
 Fhaedrus Myth is Dante's Faradiso, the_^cheme of which 
 is " The Ascension o f a Purified SoipMihrough the Moving 
 Heavens intotHePresence of God in the Unmoved Heaven." 
 Let us try to follow the line, or lines, along which the 
 influence o f the Fhaedrus Myth (for the Poem of Parmenides 
 scarcely counts) beside the Fhaedrus Myth) was transmitted 
 to the Faradiso. 
 
 It was transmitted to the Faradiso along two main lines. 
 The first passed through the Aristot elian Metaphysics and 
 de Coelo — the influence thus transmitted showing itself in the 
 definite astronomical framework of the Faradiso, and the 
 notion of Γ Amor che move il Sole e V altre Stelle. The 
 second line (which I believe to be necessary, with the first, 
 for the full explanation of the scheme, and more especially 
 of the ηθο<;, of the Faradiso) has two strands, one of which 
 consists of the Somnium Scipionis, and its antecedents, chiefly 
 Stoical ; the other, of certain astronomical apocalypses, chiefly 
 Christian — these apocalypses being closely related to certain 
 sacramental rites, or mysteries, which embody the eschatology 
 of the Fhaedrus Myth. 
 
 Let me enlarge a little on these two lines of influence; 
 and, first, try to indicate how the Myth of the νττερουράνως 
 τότΓος — the goal of all volition and intellection — passes 
 through Aristotle into the Christian mythology of Dante. 
 
 The νωτον ουρανού of the Fhaedrus Myth (247) is the 
 convex surface of t he eighth Sphe re — the Sphere of the 
 
 1 o.c. p. 201. 2 i. 18, 19. 3 ch. 25. 
 
 2a 
 
THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ed Stars, which includes, according to Plato's astronomy, 
 
 ^ /^l the other Sp heres, and carries them round with i t in its 
 
 \j(jy^ revolution from east to _west, while the y hav e their own 
 
 y\ slowe r mot ions within ΐτοτα west to east^* 
 
 J^ '"~T?he gods, sitting in their chariots, are carried round on 
 
 this outer Sphere, throughout its whole revolution, in full 
 
 sight of the Eternal Eegion beyond, while human Souls, at 
 
 least till they are perfectly purified, obtain only broken 
 
 glimpses of it. We must suppose that it is in order to get 
 
 a connected view of this Super-celestial Eegion that the 
 
 newly created Souls in the Timaeus (40 E— 42 e) are sent, 
 
 each in its star-chariot, on a journey round the Heavens. It 
 
 is the invincible desire of seeing the Super-celestial Eegion 
 
 which draws all Souls, divine and human, up to the νώτον 
 
 ουρανού, and obliges them to go round with the revolution of 
 
 ^ See Timaeus, 36 β ; Republic, 616 β if.; and Boeckh, Commentatio altera de 
 ΡΙαίοηιω Systemate Coelestium Globorum, et de vera indole Astronomiae Philo- 
 laicae (Heidelberg, 1810), p. 5. ^According to the system agcagted by Plato as 
 scientifically true, t he Earth occ upies the cen tre, ^n η d / which the Heavens ^z* 
 r evol ve ; but the Eartii does jiot revoTve on its own axi s ; t he ζΊΧΚομ ένην of )r 
 !tziK 40 Β means'T^ wra pp globed round^ '' Vnoi; '^'fey ol yingy as Ari st. de 
 
 . ^ (i7ogZer ίί: -^&^ - b ^o^.^ 'fais'^y int ^^^^ If Pl aiu ma ffi W lie Jjlarlli" re volve 
 
 ^Λ/Τ^ /^"^iLiiS. ^^^^' *^^* woul(T^Q ewanseTtie effect of the revoiirtion Qf "tl^ S phere 
 l^\y lorl^e Fixed Stars (Boeclch, o.c7 p. 9). in W^SL^F haedru s Mythriiowever, 
 
 I 
 
 Ά 
 
 Ιο Γ'ίΐΐθ Fixed Star s (Boeclch, o.c7 p. 9). in th^ Phaedru s Hyt'h 
 
 y BoecKfi Π*' "^) ^s of opin ion that Pla to desgrt s^^^ system which he accepts as 
 
 ' scientifically tru e, and follows the P ytJiagorean^ who p ut Έο-τ^ α {Aids Φυλακή) 
 
 • J in the cen t re bf the Univj ^ r sg isee iJurnet's Ea rly Greek Philo sojahy, § 125, pp. 
 
 ► 319 tl'.J^ The μένει y a p ' E^iT ^ev θβων ο'ίκφ μόνή'οΐ Phaedrus, 247 A, is in favour 
 
 ^ of Boeckh's o tjinio n ; butT apart from thi '"" ''' ' ' ''* "' 
 
 laFTla] " 
 
 », to suggest that . ^j^lato d9es not thinV of the Eart 
 l.H ' ' - -^ 
 
 ravens. If he thoug 
 
 /». H eaven 
 y/1 ! Py tliagorean central fin. 
 
 I fin this Myth T as~one of 
 ,, I gods," 
 
 ' ' ' ~ ..—- _, — ^ — , ^ — --- -— — 
 
 clau se, there is nothing in the Myth 
 " " " -'•'-' 'dst of the 
 
 rth as one o ^the planets r ev olvin g round a 
 h y does^the^ar t h not a^t ej^^r with tiie othe r planets, 
 Mytn , as one ot The ^anet::gp cls in tii e train of Zeusl '^^he. planet- 
 gods," Plato in effect says, '* a fier their jouriie y come 'Jhome.' Εστία, the 
 *irearth,' i s the ' home * to which the y ^Qine.^ T^his is a q uite naturar iequence 
 of iieas ; and I think it better to suppose that it p assed through Plato's mind, 
 than to h ave recourse to the view that^Jifi^^banc^LiS^^^Spcfrine of the 
 cent rality of th e Earth, without whigV, indg ^^^ it ^ould b e very difficult to 
 (yis u^Hise the .fall a nd Ascensi on of hunian Sou!^ — the main ^ ^ inc ident " of the 
 Myth, 'rhe statement of Theophrastus rec orded by Plutarch, that Plato in his 
 later years regretted that he had made the Ear tli t h.e centre in the Timaeus, is 
 
 see Zeller's Plato, 
 
 ί^ 
 
 i doubtless ju stly suspecte d 1bty Zeller and other scTiolars 
 p. 379, n. 37, Eng. Transl. " 
 
 I have spoken of th e choir of Zeu s as '• p lanet-g ods " ; but,B8 there are seven 
 p lane ts and twelve gocls— or el ey^ n in the' absence of Hestia — the expression 
 «9 is only app roximately e xact. Cf. Thompspn's Phaedrus, ρΓΤ59. ι 
 "^ For later developiments of the geoceim-ic system accepted by Plaro, see Arist. 
 
 Μ 
 
 ^ Cy^ Met. A, 
 ^"^ jCallippi 
 
 1073 b 17 ff, (A is judged to be~p"Usi-":SrlsLotelian by Rose, de Arist. lib. 
 the system of Eudox us with 27 sp " 
 us with 34 spheres, and that of the writer himself witn 56 spheres, are 
 
 aiict. p. 242), where the system of Eudox us with 27 spheres, that of 
 
 described. Cf. Zeller's Arist. i. 499-503, Engl. Transl. These spheres were 
 added to explain the φαινόμενα. ^j _ [ ^ fV 
 
 
 L'^i^f 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 
 
 (^55^ 
 
 the ουρανός — moving in orderjo a 
 of that which is un moved. 
 rational in f?§ ^ar 
 microcosm of the 
 
 the whole extent 
 
 on Ear th is 
 
 within the 
 
 in which the 
 
 this Unmoved 
 
 with God,_ described as an i mmateri al, 
 
 ciple , (final object [at once of knowledg^e 
 
 Heavenly Sphere moves in the presence 
 {Timaeus^7^ b). 
 
 Aristotle,\ although he omits the mythology of Souls in 
 their chariots, retains the motive of the F haedr us Myth, and, 
 indeed, much of its language,-^ in his doctrine t^at-t he Out er 
 Sphere — the Pri mum ΜοΜ Ιβ—ρ^ΛΧ,^^Μ moveg by the attrac- 
 tion^ of something be yond / which is \ unmov ed ;^^_^^d this 
 ultimate unmove d sourc e of the heavenly^jnotioi^iL^idfiiitifies 
 
 irnalmacM^aj Prin- 
 d jesirj b j Who 
 moves ihu^Heavens as One Beloved moves a LtJfor-^Taz/et ως 
 €ρώμ6νον.] Now this is Myth. God the Best Beloved, the 
 Final Truth, takes, in Aristotle's theory /the place of the ireBiov 
 άληθ€ίας)νίΙύοΙι the Souls, in Plato's Myth, eagerly seek to 
 see. "Λ The language of the Aristotelian passage, too, is worthy 
 of tne dignity of the Myth. With all its technicalities the 
 passage is a lofty hymn which has deeply influenced the 
 religious imagination of all after ages. 
 
 The ύτΓβρονράνίος τόττος, or ττβ^ίον αληθείας, of the 
 P haedrus Myt h — the God of Met Λ, Who , u nmov ed (άκίν^μον) 
 (Object of volition (βούλητόν) and i ntellectio n (νοητ 6ν)/τΏ.ογβ8 
 the Heavens — appears in the Christian doctrine, which Dante 
 poetises, as th e Q^iet Heaver/ the Empyrea n/the unmov ed 
 d welling-place of Go^ and all \he^ blesse d] spiSS) This, in 
 the mediaeval ast ronomy, is counte d asjjid?e nth Heav en.^r 
 between it aad-t Jie Eighth SphereJof i^e Platonic o- Aristotelia n^) 
 system phe ]S"inth Starless ξ>];ΐhftr^^_th ^ Cry stalline Sph ere, ' 
 had been mt'erpolatedf as primum mohile] Let us turn again 
 to the passage in the Convivio (ii. 4) in which Dante speaks 
 of the Tenth Heaven, and read it afresh^ in the light of what 
 has been said about the ireUov αληθβίας and the Aristotelian 
 God :— 
 
 " There are nine Moving Heavens ; and the order of 
 
 ^ Phaedrus, 245 c, is the source of the thought and phraseology of Arist. 
 Met. Λ, 1072 a 23 if. ^ 
 
 '^ See Arist. Met. A, 1072 a 21-1072 b 30. 
 2 See p. 164 supra. 
 
y 
 
 356 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 \ their position is as follows : The first that is reckoned is that 
 -r^ of the Moon ; the second that in which Mercury is ; the 
 ο third Venus ; the fourth the Sun ; the fifth Mars ; the sixth 
 Jupi ter ; the sev enth Satu rn ; the eighth is that of the Stars ; 
 ^he ninth J^^^tHaFwhicii can only be perceiv ed by the mm^r 
 ment above mentioned, which is called Crystalli ne, oy^ia- 
 phanou s. or wholly transparent . But outside of these 
 Catholics suppose the Empyrean Heav en, ^hich is as much 
 as to say the Heaven of Flam e, or the Lu mJTio us ; and they 
 suppose this to be immovable, since it has in itself, in respect 
 of every part, that which its m atter requ ires. And this is 
 the reason why the primum mobile has most rapid movement : 
 because by reason of the fervent longing which every part of 
 it has to be joined to every part of that most divine Motion- 
 less Heaven, it revolves within that with so grea t desire 
 that i ts veloc ity is, as it were, in compre hensible. And this 
 Motionless and Peaceful Heaven is the place of that Supreme 
 Deity which alone fully j gholds i tself. This is_ the place of 
 the blessed spirits, according as Holy Churc h, which cannot 
 lie, will have~Tt; and this Aristo tle, to whoso understands 
 him aright, seems to meafiTln the nrst hook jMihelo." 
 
 In this doctrine of the Quiet Heaven, justly said to have 
 the authority of Aristotle in its favour^^e have the motive 
 of the whole ΜνϊΕ" of the Faradiso. [The ascent of Dante, 
 ^tKrough the Mne M oving Sphere^ to the (mimoved Heaven, 
 his~~wil lf and intellecj i moved at every stag e by "the Love 
 M/which m avee tha-sun and ot her star s,'^ is a Myth — how 
 y^ valuable in its regulative influence the world knows, and 
 may yet know better — a Myth setting forth like the Myth 
 of the S9u LCiiariots,^ .iHg^s personal effort to take his place 
 in theH^osmos Jby "im itating " its eternal laws in his own 
 thought andT will, not content to look always down, like the 
 brutes, at the things beneath hiiiPoS:" the ground, but, first, 
 lifting up his eyes to the Visible God s — the stars in their 
 orderly courses — and^JJien thmEng out the law of_t heir ord er ; 
 thus, as we read (in the Timaeus |47 a), rea lising the final 
 cau se of eye s, wKic^^ s to^ ^a^en thought. The ultimate 
 ideii\Mij Oi TliouglTT^nd ^^ilj<(as both drawn forth by the 
 attraction of one Object— tKe Object, Plato would say, of 
 " Philosophy," of " Theology " Aristotle and Dante would say 
 
 ψ 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 357 
 
 — is thus contained in the Myth of the Farad iso, as in the 
 Phaedrus Myth. The associations of Dante's Myth lie 
 nearer to our modern life than those of Plato's Myth, and 
 we may be helped to appreciate the latter through the 
 former. In both we have models of ^ what a r efin ed(.My th 
 ought tobe. It ought to be based on old tradition, and yet 
 must not fetter, but rather give new freedom to, present-day 
 thinking. It is impossible to define, or even describe, the aid 
 which a refined mythology, such as that of Dante, brings to 
 a man's life, for the aid which it brings is inseparable from 
 the charm under which his personal study of it has at last 
 brought him : -χρη τα τοιαύτα ωσιτερ iiraSeiv ίαντω} 
 
 The τΓβΒίον οΧηθεία<ζ of the Phaedrus Myth, which thus 
 answers to Aristotle's κινούν ου κινονμβνον, or God, and to 
 Dante's Unmoved Heaven, or Empyrean, the dwelling-place 
 of God, holds an important position in the Neo-Platonic 
 philosophy. The passage in which Plotinus describes it is 
 one of th/most highly-strung pieces of philosophical writings 
 in the whole of his Enneads, and need not be entered upon 
 here ; ^ but Plutarch's description of it may be given. It 
 occurs in his de defectu oraculorum^ where he records the 
 doctrine of a " Barbarian Stranger," who, rejecting alike the 
 view of Plato, that there is onl y one Co sifljis, and the view of | 
 others, that the numb er of Cosmi is infi nite J and that of I 
 others still, that there are five of them, maintains that there J 
 are exactly 183^ of them, arranged i n the figure of a triangle ; 
 the sides of which they _jorm, touching on e an other — 60 to 
 each side, and on e m each angle. These Cosmi move round 
 along^e sides of the triangle in procession, άτρβμα ττβριϊόντας 
 ωσττβρ iv χορβία ; and the area of the triangle which these 
 moving Cosmi make is called the Plain of Truth, ττβΒίον 
 αληθβίας. In thisPlain/abide unmoved the r ation es (\6yoi)\ 
 formae (εϊΒη), exemplaria {ιταραΒεί^μ,ατα), of all things whichl 
 ever have, and ever shall, come into being ; and round about! 
 
 1 Phaedo, 114 D.^^ "" 
 
 2 Enn. vi. 7. 13. Two sentences from it will show its character sufficiently : — 
 iv αύτφ 6 αΚηθίν6$ vovs πέφνκ€ ττΧανα,σθαι• ττέφυκβ 5' έν ovaiais ιτΧανασθαι 
 σννθίουσων των ούσιων rats αύτοϋ irXavats. ττανταχου δ' avrbs έστι• μένονσαν 
 οΰν έ'χβι την ττλάνην. ή δέ ιτΧάνη avrq! iv τφ της αληθείας ΤΓβδίφ, οΰ ούκ 
 iκβaίv€ι. 
 
 3 Ch. 22. 
 
 ^ Half of the number of th^ days in the year, as a friend suggests to me. 
 Cf. the number of the βασιλεύς (729), Eep. 587 E. 
 
MYTHS OF pl: 
 
 Verities ip §J2Ig M Eternity (α Ιών), which flows 
 φόνος) upon Tne moving Uosmi. jpiuman Souls, 
 ive virtuously, have sight of these Eternal Verities 
 once in ten thousand_years. _The holiest mysteries of this 
 world are but aTHream of that Pex£a£it_^velation. 
 
 " This Myth of the Barbaria^ Stranger," says the narrator 
 of it in Plutarch's DialogueT^I listened to as though I were 
 being initiated. The Stranger offered no demonstration or 
 other evidence of the trutF"of it?^^ 
 
 The Myth ^ is a good instance of the way in which the 
 later Platonists used Plato's suggestions — and, it must be 
 added, Aristotle's ; for in the de Coelo^ αΙών, outside the 
 Ουρανός, where there is neither τόττος, nor κβνόν, nor 'χρόνος, 
 nor μβταβοΧη, is identified with God, whose life is described 
 as a7ra^27S*~ αρίστη, αύταρκβστάτη. Platonists had, indeed, 
 almost as rich a mine to work in Aristotle as they had in 
 Plato himself.^ 
 
 ΒβίσΓδΊί leave the spji^eet-af-4he influence of the Fhaedrus 
 Myth as tran smitted^^t o Dante yphrough the de Coelo and 
 
 I ^ Metaphysics — it sho ws ^ ^ 
 
 ^ί^Φ^ r.nomical framework of the Faradiso, and_jtlifi notion of 
 
 L' Amor che move 11 Sole e Γ altre stelle — 
 
 ^ v^may notice another notion ver^_pTominent in the Faradiso 
 which seems to have taken forni in the course of an evolution 
 
 > 
 
 
 starting from the Fhaedrus My^, or the eschatology of which 
 that Myth is the most eminent prod uct. Tl refer to the 
 
 τκΓ — — 
 
 notion that 
 produced by 
 This notion is 
 
 various 
 he actioi 
 
 or characters, are 
 
 of the stars) especially o f thejlaiiets. 
 d eeply embe dggd^^ in [_ the structure 
 The s pirits fwhom Dante Tsees in the ihree lower 
 
 " ori^ 
 exerted! 
 
 Faradiso. 
 >heres are seen by iumthere 
 
 r 
 
 * Referrea to by Dr. 
 ^ i. 9. 279 a 16. 
 
 ^ The Axiochus (371 b) is quite un-Platonic, and indeed singular, in its view 
 of the ireUov άληθ€ία$. The place where Minos and the other Judges of the 
 Dead sit is called the TreSfei' άληθβίαί, and is on the other side of Acheron and 
 Cocytus, i.e. down mjiart^'us ; whereas the ^ιμών of the Judgment-Seat in the 
 ide^{ t\ese rivers, va'ifil^iA the Republic is certainly outside 
 
 Ά 
 
 
4i> 
 
 THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 
 
 
 ambitious, 
 
 unchastiJat In the 
 Dante sees spirits 
 
 
 359 
 
 plane^ry spher es 
 t^vHose c haract~erg< 6n_^Eai:th/^re su ch as t heir various planets 
 determined ; thesa, Ipytfever, being^eyon4 ^^^ i^tf4f^ f 'S£,r^^ 
 Eariji jland its inn uence, are no l pnp er | in ^ u man j^orirj fbu 
 enclosed i n/an enveln-nft^ of h'^j-h^ — they sne araSntl^so le 
 
 [spherical/fi ike the starj ; for the sphere! i s tf? y^€r!ec 
 
 ( which ^the pureTaethereal vehicle na turally takes . Now, ifwe 
 turn from the Paradiso\o (the Phaed rusJM.j W\ we find that 
 opevral of, " ^^ 
 
 W 
 
 there Soul s are /V opeurat o f, follow fih the train oi7"va^pus 
 
 Planet-GodsN Zeus, Ares, and others, m their ascenj/to the 
 
 I Empy rean , or irehiov αλνθβί ας, and show /corresponding tem- 
 
 ngj^^ents of charac ter when (they are afterwards bgriLan the 
 
 Ihis mythological explanation of the varieties of tem- 
 perament may be compared with that offered by Macrobius 
 in his Commentary on Cicero's So mniu m Scijpionis, which 1 
 cannot do better than give in Professor DilFs words : ^ — 
 
 The Commentary on the Dream of Scijpio enables one to 
 understand how d evou t [minds^ could even to the last remain 
 attached to pa ganis m. It presupposes rather than expounds the 
 theology of Neoplatonism. Its chief motive is rather moral or 
 devotional than s peculati ve. (The One, supreme, unapproachable» 
 i neffab le, residing in the highe st heave n, is assume ^ as the source 
 of mind and life , p enetratin g(all things, from ^ne star in the 
 
 {highest ether^ to the lowest lorm of a mma l existence./^The 
 Universe"is'G-od's temple, filled with His presenc fi. The unseen, 
 inconceivable Author created ^ffom His es^gj^ce ipure min^ in the 
 likenes sQf -Hj^m^ lf. I n contact with i^ ^e|TmJji m|ii€genefat 
 ^βΚ and , ^co^&8 <SouP. In tke scale ηΐ hp.i n7 tfh ρ7 ^ j^Jikn \-m ar ic s th ft 
 r^"^/ l imit befv^ee 
 1*^^ moon 
 
 Ϊ 
 
 x\r 
 
 ete rnalvjajia^ tLe perishab le) ai^^jPT bel ow t he 
 isf m fB?i^l A nd ^ vat^scenj l fec^epj^ /Se higher princip le (jn 
 mani rassmg from tny divine world /through the gaW'of Cancer 
 cT!rlotin.ijnnead,iY.Jo. 15), ^^m^cfescends gradu ally, i n a f all 
 from its ^igingl hlftaiP.rlnftgg ^rough the seven sphe res, and, in 
 its pass^e,"^£ie diviqe and u niversal e lemenJ/assumesTthe various 
 facuh d^ &^i^c h'^ make/up the comp os ite na^^reoWB gi iirSaturn 
 it^^uires^he reaspning power^m J upiter t^gpractical and 
 moral, in Mars tlmjpirited, in Venus the sensual elem ent. But 
 in fene process offd epcendin g into the body, the divine pajyf^ufi'ers 
 a M>rt of intoxicatyipn and oblivion of the world from which it 
 
 intoxi 
 
 Roman Society 
 
 Western Empire, pp. 90, 91. 
 
 V 
 
THE MYTHS 
 
 ^'■Y^-Xf 
 
 OF PLATO 
 
 comes, in some cases deeper than in others, 
 of Soul among bodil^_fa 
 
 r^}\. 
 
 only a prison , or rathe 
 
 a s Scond^dea th, the death to sin 
 
 sath 
 
 Thus 
 s a kind of death ; 
 
 th( 
 
 in( 
 
 tomb/ which cannot be 
 
 iPftriKr ^mfa vi; 
 
 lifFusion 
 body i s 
 ^y 
 
 -^ 
 
 .c^ 
 
 V V p«irtici 
 
 Here, in the Commentary . oC- Macrob ius, two things kept 
 separate in the FhaedrusMjth — the Fall of Souls^ the Earth 
 
 TO TTTepoppve cv, an 
 
 . rticular gods- 
 
 η/\/ W^co mes int o f^^c 
 ( ^ J a complex te rnpe fament 
 
 th^ir (Inembership of^ the reti nue of 
 a re combineji^ . (Ι ϊΙβ in its FaUj that ρ Soul 
 VQ^i i tlie"gocls 
 
 iession/ 
 
 ^ , and deriv es, i t would seem/ 
 
 3m touch with them ^11 in sue 
 
 fr. 
 
 ^ 
 
 (^^ 
 
 Ά jS^W' ^^^^ regard to the ca use of tli^Fal l of Sou ls — the Ήβο- 
 ^N Platonic mythology, ^hile retajcing the i rrepoppv eiv explana- 
 tion given ^^^ in th e ^lagc^r ^g/dwells more p articu larly on the 
 ^3eas_ of ^Jllugg b) and intoxication. Soulsl remain at peace 
 above till, like Narcissus, they see themsel vesTref iected) in the 
 mirror of Dionysus : ^ this is (flge flowing stream of sense) and 
 g eneratio n, into 3^]i jcli thp y p^^ng^e^ ^istaking t he ima ^ for' 
 reautyT' With (S ief idea of[illusiSi n}lius_illustrated, theTHea of 
 intoxication connecfeitselRSurally. ( The ^ream of sens e, the 
 
 ^ y^ mirror of Dionysus, i s<^e bowl of Dio nysu^. Plunging into 
 W^ /\ ijJ4)h eg gulj (jrinSs forget fuln^ of" Eternal Trut h, and the \ 
 yy y/w^B ml; A which it is b orn thereatt^ t^'lis ^tlie ατ τη^αιον Χηθης. 1 
 ^/f T^^e are soulgT which haye^ ot ar unk so^ deeplv)as others of 
 
 ^ 
 
 )θηψ wnicr 
 There are 
 "retain some recoUec" 
 
 ' /y^is l& up.) There are /the " dU:^ ^:aauls ^ ^ Jof Hera clitus.^ Thevy 
 Jyp &fclll re toin_s ome recoUecEion oij^e ^embodied sta^ , and in ^Jl•^ 
 ^ this^fearthly life hearken to th e ^:οο^όαίμων) wh^^omes with 
 them m theiy^KaUooo^Y' The comparison ofyb he b ody to a 
 
 ^ Macrobius, Somn. i. 12, 68. See Lobeck, Aglaoph. pp. 932 if., where other 
 writers are quoted for this view of the formation of human temperament. The 
 seven planets likewise connect themselves with the seven days of the week, and 
 the seven metals {έκάστφ των αστέρων ϋλη rts auayerai, ηλίφ μέν ό xpvaos, 
 aeXrjPTi δέ apyvpos, "Apec σίδηροί, Κρόνφ μόλιβδοί, Ad ήλ€κτρο$, Έρμτ} κασσίτ€ρο$, 
 ΆφροδίτΎ} χαλκό?, Schol. on Pindar, Isthm. v. 2) ; consequently the Mithraic 
 stair, κλΐμαξ έπτάττυλος, represented the seven planetary spheres, through which 
 the Soul passes, by seven metals : the first step, that of Saturn, was of lead ; 
 the second, that of Venus, of tin ; the third, that of Jupiter, of brass ; the 
 fourth, that of Mercury, of iron, and so on, the days of the week being taken in 
 backward order : see Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 934. Further, there are seven colours, 
 seven strings, seven vowels, seven ages of a man's life, as well as seven planets, 
 seven days, and seven metals (cf. Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie, pp. 186 if.) ; also 
 seven seals, some of them associated with differently coloured horses, and seven 
 Is, in Eev. v.-viii. 
 
 '2 Plotin. Ennead, iv. 3. 12, vol. i. p. 247, ed. Kirchhoff. 
 
 ^ By water, Heracliti Mel, p. 30. 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 361 
 
 Heraclitean r iv er,Lwhich occurs in Timaeu s_(43 Λ, doubtless 
 contributed to this Neo-Platonic mythol ogy of the Fall . J 
 
 The second line of influence connecting fthe Faradiso with 
 the Fhaedrus\Myth has, as I said, two strands, the first of 
 which consiste of the Somnium Scipionis and its antecedents, 
 chiefly Stoical. The links between the Phaedrus Myth and 
 Somnium Scipionis (which Dante undoubtedly knew) ^ are in- 
 dicated by Dieterich in passages referred to above,^ and need 
 not be specified here ; but the second strand, consisting of the 
 astronomical apocalypses, has scarcely received the attention 
 which it deserves, and I venture to say something about it. 
 
 It is remarkable how little Dante is indebted in the 
 Paradiso to the Revelation of St. John. The seven references 
 in the Paradiso to that Apocalypse noted by Dr. Moore {Studies 
 in Dante, First Series, Index to Quotations, 1) concern details 
 only. The Revelation of St. John has indeed nothing service- 
 able for Dante's purpose except details, for its scheme is quite 
 different from that of the Paradiso. It is very doubtful if the 
 writer knows anything of the astronomy of the eight Moving 
 Heavens and the Unmoved Heaven ; at any rate, if he does, he 
 makes no use of it ; his scheme is not that of the Ascension of 
 a Soul through Heaven after Heaven. The scene is always 
 changing from Heaven to Earth, and to Hell ; and the New 
 Jerusalem, in the description of which the Vision culminates, 
 descends out of the New Heaven, and is established upon the 
 New Earth. It is to apocalypses of an entirely different type 
 that the Paradiso is related — to apocalypses in which the 
 whole mise en scdne of the eschatological drama is astronomical, 
 and the preoccupation of the writers is not, as that of the 
 writer of the Revelation of St. John largely is, with the Keign 
 of theM essiah j on E ar^jy^v^T• a<J^<^g^ri people, ©ut with the 
 (ic apapai^of^Q disembodied ^ouy) of the individual. These 
 " astronomical apocalypses," as we may call them — some of 
 them of Jewish authorship (like the Book of the Secrets of 
 Enoch, the " Slavonic Enoch," ^ which was written, before the 
 
 ^ See Tozer {An English ComTnentary on Dante's " Divina Commedia ") on Par. 
 xxii. 133 if. ; and cL Annual Report of the Dante Society {Cambridge, Mass.), 1901 ; 
 Index of Authors quoted by Benvenuto da Imola, by Paget Toynbee, art. 
 " Macrobius." 
 
 2 Supra, pp. 352, 353. 
 
 ^ Translated from the Slavonic by W. R. MorfiU, and edited with Introduc- 
 tion, notes, and indices, by R. H. Charles, 1896. 
 
362 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 end of the second century B.C., at Alexandria, in the main in 
 Greek, although portions of it reproduce a Hebrew original), 
 the majority of them of Christian authorship — owe their astro- 
 nomy mainly to Greek sources. It is true, of course, that the 
 conception of Seven Heavens answering to the Seven Planets 
 was familiar in the East before the Hellenistic period ; ^ but 
 the remarkable prominence which the conception suddenly 
 assumed in that period can only, I submit, be ascribed to 
 direct Greek influence.^ The scheme of these apocalypses 
 is always that of a Soul separated by ecstasy from its body, 
 and, with some angel or daemon as guide or μυσταηωηό^, 
 rising from the Earth, through air to aether, and then from 
 planetary sphere to planetary sphere, up to the Presence of 
 God in, or beyond, the Seventh Heaven. Thus in the 
 Ascension of Isaiah? Isaiah is conducted, through the seven 
 planetary spheres, to the Presence of God the Father, and 
 hears Him commissioning His Son to descend to the Earth. 
 The descent of Christ through the spheres is then described ; 
 and after an account of His life on Earth, and death, and 
 resurrection, the Apocalypse closes with His Ascension through 
 the Heavenly Spheres to the right hand of God. 
 
 The persistence of this type — the " astronomical apoca- 
 lypse " — is as remarkable as its wide distribution. Appearing 
 first among the Jews in the second century B.C., it is adopted 
 by the Christians — Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and Ethiopian, and 
 at last by Islam ; for the Vision of Mahomet is one of the 
 best examples of it. 
 
 The Vision of Mahomet is the story of the Prophet's 
 miraculous journey from Mecca to " the further temple " at 
 Jerusalem, and his ascent thence,* through the Circles of 
 Heaven, into the immediate Presence of God, far beyond where 
 even Gabriel could ascend. I give the story (only briefly 
 referred to in the Quran itself, ch. xvii. 1, but told in all the 
 
 ^ See Prof. Charles's Introduction to The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, pp. 
 xxi. ff. 
 
 2 Dieterich {Eine Mithrasliturgie, p. 192) remarks that the conception of the 
 ascension of the Soul through Heavenly Stations does not appear in Jewish 
 literature till the Hellenistic period — in the Apocalypse of Enoch. 
 
 ^ Written in Greek, according to Prof. Charles (see his Ascension of Isaiah, 
 1900, and his articles on Apocalyptic literature in the End. Brit, and Encl. 
 Bib.), between a.d. 50 and 80, translated into Latin, Ethiopic, and Slavonic, 
 and extant now in its entirety only in the Ethiopic version. 
 
 ^ It is from the spot antipodal to Jerusalem that Dante ascends. 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 363 
 
 earliest Lives of the Prophet) in the words of Mr. P. de Lacy 
 Johnstone {Muhammad and his Power, 1901, pp. 84 ff.) : — 
 
 At the portal of the first heaven the angel knocked, and a 
 voice from within inquired who sought admittance. Gabriel 
 answered, " It is I, GabrieL" But again the voice asked, " Is there 
 any with thee ? " and he said, " Muhammad." Again came the 
 question, " Hath he been called (to the office of prophet) ? " and he 
 answered, " Yes." Then was the gate opened, and they entered ; 
 and Adam greeted Muhammad with the words, " Welcome, pious 
 son and pious Prophet ! " Then Muhammad beheld, and saw two 
 doors, the one on Adam's right hand, and the other on his left. 
 As oft as he looked towards the first he laughed with delight, and 
 there issued therefrom a sweet savour; but as often -as he turned 
 to the other he wept, and from it came evil odours ; and the 
 Prophet marvelled, and asked of Gabriel what this should mean ; 
 and it was told him that the one door led to Paradise, and the 
 other to Hell, and that the Father of Mankind rejoiced over those 
 who were saved, and wept over those of his children who were lost. 
 Then they soared upward to the second Heaven, to which they 
 entered after the same questions and answers as at the first ; and 
 there were two young men, John the Baptist and Jesus, and they 
 greeted Muhammad, " Welcome, pious brother and pious Prophet ! " 
 Thence they passed to the third Heaven, to receive the same wel- 
 come from Joseph, " whose beauty excelled that of all other crea- 
 tures as far as the light of the full moon surpasses that of the stars " ; 
 then to the fourth, where Enoch greeted them ; and the fifth, where 
 Aaron welcomed them with the same words. In the sixth Heaven 
 Moses welcomed him as his brother and a Prophet ; but he wept 
 as he soared above him — not for envy of Muhammad's glory sur- 
 passing his own, but to think that so few of his own nation were 
 appointed to Paradise. From the Heaven of Moses the Archangel 
 led Muhammad up to the seventh, where he showed him Abraham 
 "his Father," who bade him "Welcome, pious son and pious 
 Prophet ! " In this seventh Heaven the Prophet beheld the 
 wondrous Tree, the abode of Gabriel, round which fly countless 
 myriads of angels ; from its foot spring the two rivers of Paradise, 
 and the two great rivers of Earth — Euphrates and the Nile ; and 
 " the light of God overspreads the whole Tree." There, too, was 
 the heavenly Kaaba, the original of the Meccan, and round it went, 
 in adoring circuit, radiant armies of angels ; so vast indeed is their 
 number that the same worshipping host never returns after once 
 making the mystic round. Beyond the seventh Heaven Gabriel 
 could only go with the Prophet, and that by special permission, as 
 far as the first of the seventy veils of dazzling light (each 500 
 years' journey from the next) that shut in the Throne of God. As 
 
364 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 the Prophet passed each successive stage, the gracious Voice bade 
 him " come nearer ! " till at last he entered the immediate presence 
 of God. There he was endowed Λvith perfect wisdom and know- 
 ledge, cheered with the promise that all who received his message 
 should be taken into Paradise, and commanded to lay on his faith- 
 ful followers the duty of praying fifty times in the day. The 
 Prophet returned from God's Presence Chamber to the lower 
 heavens, and told Moses of the duty laid upon him. But by the 
 old Lawgiver's advice he time after time ventured back to plead 
 with his Lord till the burden of the daily prayers was reduced to 
 five — the perpetual ordinance of Islam. Then with lightning 
 speed the Prophet was returned to his chamber at Mecca, and, for 
 all the wondrous things he had seen, yet was the bed warm when 
 he lay down again. 
 
 There can be no doubt, of course, that the Vision of Mahomet 
 was deliberately modelled on the Astronomical Apocalypse of 
 which the Ascension of Isaiah may be taken as an example. 
 Can there be any doubt that the same Type was before Dante's 
 mind when he wrote the Faradiso ? It would be unreasonable 
 to suppose that a Poem, which in ήθος as well as in astro- 
 nomical scheme so closely conforms to a Type of which the 
 examples were so widely distributed, was written in ignorance 
 of that Type. The Faradiso, as it stands, cannot be accounted 
 for by the supposition that the Somnium Scipionis filrst 
 suggested to the Christian Poet an astronomical scheme which 
 he elaborated on lines laid down for him by Aristotle and 
 Alfraganus, in whose works he happened to be learned and 
 greatly interested. It was not, I take it, because he knew 
 the Somnium Scipionis and was interested in the traditional 
 astronomy that he adopted the astronomical scheme, but 
 because he found that scheme in the Christian Apocalypse 
 already consecrated to the subject with which his Poem is 
 concerned (and the Somnium Scipionis is not) — the κάθαρσυς 
 of a Soul.^ 
 
 Taking, then, the Astronomical Apocalypse of which the 
 
 ^ The Ascension of Isaiah, one of the most elaborately astronomical of the 
 apocalypses, existed in a Latin version which Dante may well have know». It 
 was printed at Venice in 1522, and contains — 6-11 — the "ascension" proper. 
 See also Mr. M. R. James {The Revelation of Peter, p. 40, and Texts and Sttidies, 
 ii. 2, pp. 23 if. ) for the influence of the Apocalypse of Paul (a fourth or early fifth 
 century work, which exhibits, with some confusion, the astronomical scheme 
 which is so exactly followed in the Ascension of Isaiah) upon mediaeval visions 
 and the Divina Commedia. 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 365 
 
 Secrets of Enoch, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Vision of 
 Mahomet are examples, as the Type on which Dante deliber- 
 ately modelled the Paradiso, with the aid of the de Coelo, 
 and Metaphysics, and Elementa of Alfraganus, and Somnium 
 Scipionis (itself a divergent example of the same Type), let 
 me try to indicate the connection of this Type with the 
 eschatology of the Phaedrus Myth. 
 
 The connection is to be found, I think, in the use made 
 by sacramental ritual of the celestial mise en seine adopted in 
 the Phaedrus Myth for the representation of the Soul's History 
 — the sacramental ritual itself being the germ out of which 
 the literary product — the Apocalypse — grew. Fortunately 
 Dieterich's recent work, Eine Mithrasliturgie (1903), enables 
 us to form a clearer idea of the sacramental ritual referred to 
 than was possible before. 
 
 The " Liturgy " ^ which Dieterich edits and comments on 
 (whether a Mithras liturgy, as he holds, or belonging to some 
 other ritual, as Cumont holds ^) is the Order to be observed in 
 a Sacramental Drama which conducts the μύστης; through 
 stages or stations of ritual performance representing the 
 grades of the ascent of the disembodied Soul, through the 
 Heavenly Spheres, up to the Presence of the Highest God 
 beyond the Pole. What happens ritually here to the μύστης 
 will be accomplished actually for his Soul after death. The 
 ecstasy which the solemn sacrament procures and regulates 
 through ascending grades of feeling is a preparation for, and a 
 guarantee of, the actual ascension of the disembodied Soul. 
 
 The Liturgy begins with a Prayer which the μύστης, still 
 
 ^ The Paris Papyrus 574, Supplement grec de la Bibliotheque Nationale, from 
 the text of which Dieterich restores this Liturgy, was, according to him, written 
 at the beginning of the fourth century after Christ (see o.c. p. 43), not, however, 
 in the interest of worship, but as a book of magic. A Greek Mithras liturgy 
 composed in Egypt in the second century (see o.c. pp. 45, 46) was transcribed 
 in the fourth century, and άσημα ονόματα, "nonsense words," interspersed 
 through its text ; and the farrago thus produced was to be recited as a spell, or 
 series of spells. 
 
 On the origin, nature, and remarkable spread of Mithras-worship the reader 
 may consult Cumont's Mysteres de Mithra (1902), with map. 
 
 ■^ See especially M. Cumont's elaborate criticism of Dieterich's Mithrasliturgie, 
 in the Revue de Γ Instruction Puhlique en Belgique. The "Liturgy," according 
 to M. Cumont, is a "magic-book" after all, reproducing the thoughts and even 
 the style of the Hermetic treatises ; but the writer, to enhance the value of his 
 .work, instead of following the ordinary method and publishing it as a revelation 
 of Isis to Horus or of Hermes to Tat, presents it as a communication received 
 by himself from the great forei^ god Mithras through the intermediation of an 
 archangel. 
 
366 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 regarded as in the Sublunary Eegion, must recite. The 
 Prayer recited, he rises, using set forms of words (some of 
 them perhaps άσημα ονόματα) at each stage, from the element 
 of Earth to that of Water ; then to Fire (sublunary, not 
 celestial), and then to Air. Then, next, he stands before 
 Doors ^ of Fire which admit to the aethereal world of the 
 Gods — the Spheres of the Planets. Standing before these 
 Doors, the μύστης says, " I too am a star which goeth 
 along with you, rising with his beams out of the depth : 
 oxyoxerthouth " — εγώ βΐμί σύμττΧανος υμίν άστηρ καΐ βκ του 
 βάθους άναΧάμττων οξυοξερθουθ.^ At these words the Door- 
 keeper, the Fire-God, opens the Doors, and the μύστης enters 
 the Kegion of the Planets, where the Sun appears and goes 
 before him to the Pole. Arrived there, he is in the Sphere of 
 the Fixed Stars — represented by the seven τύχ^αυ and the 
 seven ττοΧοκράτορβς, probably the Seven Stars of the Little 
 Bear and the Great Bear round the Pole. Beyond the Pole 
 and Sphere of the Fixed Stars is the throne of the Highest 
 God, who guides the Great Bear, άρκτος, which, in turn, 
 moves the Sphere of the Fixed Stars in a direction opposite 
 to that in which the Planets move. Into the presence of this 
 Highest God the μύστης at last comes ; and the Liturgy ends 
 with his words of adoration — κύρίβ, χαΐρβ, Βέσττοτα ΰΒατος, 
 ^atpe, κατάργα ^ης, γαΐρβ, Βυνάστα ττνβύματος. κύριβ, ττάλιν 
 Ύβνόμβνος άτΓο^ί'^νομαι, — Ι die, Ι am born again — αύξόμβνος 
 και αυξηθείς τβΧβυτώ, άττο Ύβνέσβως ζωο'γόνου ^γβνόμβνος βίς 
 ά^ΓO'yeveσίav άναΧυθβϊς ττορβύομαι, ώς συ 'έκτισας, ως συ 
 βνομοθβτησας καΐ βττοίησας μυστηριον.^ 
 
 Here, then, in the " Mithras liturgy " we have the order 
 of a sacrament carried out on lines laid down in the Vision 
 of Parmenides and the Phaedrus Myth, — the astronomical 
 eschatology of these pieces is embodied in a ritual — the actual 
 ascension of the disembodied Soul is prepared for, and indeed 
 guaranteed, in this life, by means of a dramatic representation 
 of it, in which the μύστης is the actor. Associated thus with 
 a practical end of the highest importance — the salvation of 
 the μύστης — the astronomical scheme would be likely to hold 
 the field against all rivals ; and this is what it actually did. 
 
 ^ There are Doors also through which Parmenides passes in his ascension. 
 2 Dieterich, o.c. p. 8. ^ Dieterich, ox. p. 14. 
 
THE FHAEDBUS MYTH 367 
 
 The notion of άνάβασις so completely extruded that of 
 κατάβασί'ζ, that we find even the Place of Torment localised 
 somewhere in the air — as by Plutarch, in his de facie in orhe 
 lunae ^ and his Aridaeus-Thespesius Myth ; ^ in the latter the 
 region just under the moon is designated as the furthest point 
 reached by Orpheus when he went to seek Eurydice — the 
 traditional Όρφβως κατάβασί<; is actually transformed into an 
 ^Ορφύως άνάβασις. 
 
 I cannot but think that the extraordinary popularity 
 obtained by the Astronomical Apocalypse was due to the fact 
 that behind it sacramental ritual originally stood. It is 
 certainly remarkable that the Hellenistic and early Christian 
 period, which produced the Astronomical Apocalypse, was also 
 the age of innumerable Sacramental Cults. We can hardly 
 have here a mere coincidence. The Apocalypse, I take it, was 
 valued, at first, as setting forth, in interesting narrative, the 
 ascension which the ritual symbolised and guaranteed: 
 indeed, it was probably valued for something more than its 
 interesting narrative — for some sacramental value which it 
 derived from the parent ritual. We seem to have this 
 mysterious " something more " even in Dante's conception of 
 his own Apocalypse. His Vision of Paradise is to him a 
 saving sacrament of which he has partaken : — 
 
 Donna, in cui la mia speranza vige, 
 
 Ε che soifristi per la mia salute, 
 
 In Inferno lasciar le tue vestige ; 
 Di tante cose, quante io ho vedute, 
 
 Dal tuo podere e dalla tua bontate 
 
 Riconosco la grazia e la virtute. 
 Tu m' hai di servo tratto a libertate 
 
 Per tutte quelle vie, per tutt' i modi, 
 
 Che di cio fare avei la potestate. 
 La tua magnificenza in me custodi. 
 
 Si che V aninia mia, che fatt' hai sana, 
 
 Piacente a te dal corpo si disnodi.^ 
 
 In his note on this passage Mr. Tozer * says : " Dante's 
 
 1 Chapter 28. 
 
 2 j9g ggj-f^ numinis vindieta, chapter 22. In his Introduction to The Book of 
 the Secrets of Enoch (pp. xxxiv. fF.), Prof. Charles remarks that "the presence of 
 evil in heaven caused no offence in early Semitic thought." In the northern 
 region of the Third Heaven Enoch sees the place of the damned, and Mahomet 
 sees it in the First Heaven. ^ 
 
 3 Far. xxxi. 79 if. 
 
 ^ English Commentary on Dante's " Divina Commedia," pp. 615, 616. 
 
r 
 
 368 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 conversion and ultimate salvation were the primary object of 
 his journey through the three realms of the spiritual world." 
 
 The close connection between sacramental ritual or initia- 
 tion and apocalypse is very clearly brought out in the Myth 
 with which Plutarch ends his de sera numinis vindicta — the 
 Vision of Aridaeus-Thespesius just now alluded to. The hero 
 of the Myth is a wicked man called Aridaeus, who, as the 
 result of an accident to his head, lies unconscious for three 
 days, during which time his Soul (the rational part of it, but 
 not the irrational) visits the world of spirits in the air, where 
 he receives a new name, Thespesius. With this new name he 
 returns to this world, a new man, regenerate, and lives ever 
 after in the practice of virtue and religion. This Myth 
 is one of a well-marked class of eschatological visions, or 
 apocalypses, which render, in literary form, the ritual observed 
 at initiation — initiation being viewed as a Death, and a New 
 Birth, warranting the imposition of a New Name. Like the 
 initiatory ritual which it renders, this type of apocalyptic 
 vision involves what may be figured as the Death of the 
 μύστης — by ecstasy he passes into a state from which he 
 returns to his ordinary life a new man. 
 
 It is as a new man — as one filled with a joy which is not 
 of this world — that Dante returns from the apocalyptic vision, 
 or initiation, of the Paradiso — 
 
 Credo cli' io vidi, perche piu di largo, 
 Dicendo questo, mi sento ch' io godo.^ 
 
 The Paradiso is the last of the descendants of the 
 Phaedrus Myth ; and reveals its parentage in nothing so 
 clearly as in its character of being, for its author, and even 
 for ourselves, a μνστήριον — a solemn ritual at which one may 
 assist, not merely an admirable piece of literary workmanship. 
 Plutarch's Aridaeus-Thespesius Myth ^ seems to me to be 
 so important for the understanding of what I have called the 
 celestial and astronomical mise en scdne given to eschatology 
 by Plato in the Phaedrus Myth, and, after him, by philosophers 
 of different schools, by religious societies, more especially in 
 the order of their sacramental ritual, by the apocalyptic writers, 
 Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan, and, lastly, by Dante in 
 
 ^ Pai\ xxxiii. 92, 93. ^ De sera numinis vindicta, cli. 22. 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 369 
 
 his Faradiso, that I shall give the reader the opportunity of 
 perusing the passage in Philemon Holland's version : ^ — 
 
 There was one Thespesius of the city of Soli in Cilicia, who 
 having led his youthful days very loosely, within a small time 
 had wasted and consumed all his goods, whereby he was fallen 
 for a certain space to extreme want and necessity, which brought 
 him also to a lewd life, insomuch as he proved a very bad man ; 
 and repenting his former follies and dispense, began to make 
 shifts, and seek all means to recover his state again ... he for- 
 bare no lewd, indirect, and shameful practices, so they turned to 
 his gain and profit, and within a little while he gat together not 
 great store of goods, but procured to himself a bad name of 
 wicked dealing, much shame, and infamy. But the thing that 
 made him famous, and so much spoken of, was the answer de- 
 livered unto him from the Oracle of Amphilochus, for thither had 
 he sent, as it should seem, to know whether he should live the 
 rest of his life better than he had done before. Now the oracle 
 returned this answer : That it would be better with him after he 
 was dead ; which in some sort happened unto him not long after : 
 For being fallen from an high place with his head forward, with- 
 out any limb broken, or wound made ; only with the fall the 
 breath went out of his body, and there he lay for dead ; and three 
 days after, preparation being made for his funerals, carried forth 
 he was to be buried ; but behold all on a sudden he revived, and 
 quickly came to himself again ; whereupon there ensued such a 
 change and alteration in his life, that it was wonderful ; for by the 
 report and testimony of all the people of Cilicia, they never knew 
 man of a better conscience in all his affairs and dealings, whiles he 
 did negotiate and dwell among them ; none more devout and re- 
 ligious to God-ward, none more fast and sure to his friends, none 
 bitterer to his enemies ; insomuch as they who were most inward 
 with him, and had kept his company familiarly a long time, 
 were very desirous and earnest with him, to know the cause of 
 so strange and sudden alteration. . . . Thus he reported unto 
 them and said : That when the spirit was out of his body, he fared 
 at the first (as he thought himself) like unto a pilot, flung out of 
 his ship, and plunged into the bottom of the sea ; so wonderfully 
 was he astonished at this change; but afterwards, when as by 
 little and little he was raised up again and recovered, so that he 
 was ware that he drew his breath fully, and at liberty, he looked 
 round about him, for his soul seemed as if it had been one eye 
 fully open ; but he beheld nothing that he Avas wont to view, only 
 
 ^ The Fhilosophie, commonlie called The Morals, written hy the learned 
 Philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea, translated out of Greeke into English^ and 
 conferred with the Latine translations and the French, hy PhilemonS Holland of 
 Coventrie, Doctor in Physicke. London, 1603. 
 
 2b 
 
370 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 he thought that he saw planets and other stars of an huge bigness, 
 distant an infinite way asunder, and yet for number innumerable, 
 casting from them a wonderful light, with a colour admirable, 
 the same glittering and shining most resplendent, with a power and 
 force incredible, in such sort, as the said soul being gently and easily 
 carried, as in a chariot, with this splendour and radiant light, as 
 it were upon the sea in a calm, went quickly whithersoever she 
 would ; but letting pass a great number of things worthy there 
 to be seen, he said that he beheld how the souls of those that were 
 departed this life, as they rose up and ascended, resembled certain 
 small fiery bubbles, and the air gave way and place unto them as 
 they mounted on high; but anon when these bubbles by little 
 and little brast insunder, the souls came forth of them, and appeared 
 in the form and shape of men and women, very light and nimble, 
 as discharged from all poise to bear them down : howbeit, they 
 did not move and bestir themselves all alike and after one sort ; 
 for some leaped with a wonderful agility, and mounted directly 
 and plumb upright; others turned round about together like 
 unto bobbins or spindles, one while up and another while down, so 
 as their motion was mixed and confused, and so linked together, 
 that unneth for a good while and with much ado they could be 
 stayed and severed asunder. As for these souls and spirits, many 
 of them he knew not (as he said) who they were; but taking 
 knowledge of two or three among them who had been of his old 
 acquaintance, he pressed forward to approach near and to speak 
 unto them : but they neither heard him speak, nor indeed were in 
 their right senses ; but being after a sort astonied and beside 
 themselves, refused once to be either seen or felt, wandering and 
 flying to and fro apart at the first ; but afterwards, encountering and 
 meeting with a number of others disposed like unto themselves, 
 they closed and clung unto them, and thus linked and coupled 
 together, they moved here and there disorderly without discretion, 
 and were carried every way to no purpose, uttering I wot not 
 what voices, after a manner of yelling or a black-sanctus, not 
 significant nor distinct, but as if they were cries mingled with 
 lamentable plaints and dreadful fear. Yet there were others to 
 be seen aloft in the uppermost region of the air, jocund, gay and 
 pleasant, so kind also and courteous, that oftentimes they would 
 seem to approach near one unto another, turning away from those 
 other that were tumultuous and disorderly. . . . Among these (by 
 his own saying) he had a sight of a soul belonging to a kinsman 
 and familiar friend of his, and yet he knew him not certainly, for 
 that he died whiles himself was a very child ; howbeit, the said 
 soul, coming toward him, saluted him in these terms : God save 
 you, Thespesius : whereat he marvelled much, and said unto him : 
 I am not Thespesius, but my name is Aridaeus : True, indeed 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 371 
 
 (quoth the other), before-time you were so called, but from hence- 
 forth Thespesius shall be your name ; for dead you are not yet, 
 but, by the providence of God and permission of Destiny, you are 
 hither come, with the intellectual part of the so ul • and , ^f or all 
 %tiie rest, you have left it behind, 4ticking fast as(in an ^ Ebr td ymy 
 yXb o di ^ and that you may now know this and evermore hereafter, 
 take this for a certain rule and token : That the spirits of those 
 who are departed and dead indeed, yield no shadow from them ; 
 they neither wink nor yet open their eyes. Thespesius, hearing 
 these words, began to pluck up his spirits so much the more, for 
 to consider and discourse with himself : looking therefore every 
 way about him, he might perceive that there accompanied him a 
 certain shadowy and dark lineature, whereas the other souls shone 
 round about, and were clear and transparent within forth, how- 
 beit not all alike ; fo r some vielded_Jr om them jpuf ^rt^oTou!•, uni- 
 form and equal, a s do££(^he f^pg^ ^^ hen^jt^lis-yat the clear est ; 
 others had (as it were) -sifaies or <i5lcafeces, dispersed here and 
 there by certain distant spaces between ; some again were wonder- 
 ful hideous and strange to see unto, all to be specked with black 
 spots, like to serpents' skins ; and others had light scarifications 
 and obscure risings upon their visage. Now this kinsman of 
 Thespesius discoursed severally of each thing, saying : That 
 Adrasteia the Daughter of Jupiter and Necessity was placed 
 highest and above the rest, to punish and to be revenged 
 of all sorts of crimes and heinous sins, and that of wicked and 
 sinful wretches there was not one (great or small) who either by 
 force or cunning could ever save himself and escape punishment : 
 but of one kind of pain and punishment (for three sorts there be 
 in all) belonged to this gaoler or executioner, and another to that ; 
 for there is one which is quick and speedy called IIotvTJ, that is 
 Penalty, and this taketh in hand the execution and chastisement 
 of those who immediately in this life (whiles they are in their 
 bodies) be punished by the body, after a mild and gentle manner, 
 leaving unpunished many light faults, which require some petty 
 purgation ; but such as require more ado to have their vices and 
 sins cured, God committeth them to be punished after death to a 
 second tormentress, named Δικ?;, that is to say, Eevenge; mary those 
 who are so laden with sins that they be altogether incurable, when 
 Αίκη hath given over and thrust them from her, the third minis- 
 tress of Adrasteia, which of all other is most cruel, and named 
 Erinnys, runneth after, chasing and pursuing them as they wander 
 and run up and down ; these (I say), she courseth and hunteth 
 with great misery and much dolor, until such time as she have 
 overtaken them all and plunged them into a bottomless pit of 
 darkness inenarrable and invisible. . . . Observe well (quoth he) 
 and consider the diverse colours of these souls of all sorts; for 
 
THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 is blackish and foul duskish hue is properly the tincture of 
 avarice and niggardise ; that which is deep red and fiery betokeneth 
 cruelty and malice ; whereas if it stand much upon blue it is a 
 sign that there intemperance and looseness in the use of pleasures 
 hath remained a long time, and will be hardly scoured off, for that 
 it is a vile vice : but the violet colour and sweetish withal pro- 
 ceedeth from Gn\y, a venomous and poisoned colour. . . , But 
 here it is a sign that the purification of the soul is fully finished, 
 whenas all these tinctures are done away quite, whereby the soul 
 may appear in her native hue, all fresh, neat, clear, and lightsome. 
 . . . Now, of these souls some there be which after they have 
 been well and thoroughly chastised, and that sundry times, recover 
 in the end a decent habitude and dispos ition ; but others again 
 are such as (he vehemence of their(ignoran^ , and the flatter- 
 ing shew of pleasures and lustfui cl6sire, transporteth them 
 t into the bodies of brute beasts . . . (ih^jLJesire (by the means of 
 I t he bodykbo enjoy the fruitio n o f ftheir appetite/ ; torasmuch as 
 here there is nothin g at all but a bare shad ow, and as one would 
 say, a vain dr eam of pleasur e which neve r co meth to perfection 
 and fulnepT When he had thus said, he brought and led me 
 away ^mosu swiftly an infinite way; howbeit, with ease and gently, 
 upon the rays of the light, as if they had been wings, unto a certain 
 place where there was a huge wide chink tending downward still, 
 and thither being come, he perceived that he was forlorn and for- 
 saken of that powerful spirit that conducted and brought him 
 thither ; where he saw that other souls also were in the same case ; 
 for being gathered and flocked together like a sort of birds, they 
 fly downward round about this gaping chawne, but enter into it 
 directly they durst not ; now the said chink resembled for all the 
 world within the caves of Bacchus, so t apiss ed and adorned they 
 were with the verdure of great leaves and branches, together with 
 all variety of gay flowers, from whence arose and breathed forth 
 a sweet and mild exhalation, which yielded a delectable and 
 pleasant savour, wonderful odoriferous, with a most temperate air, 
 which no less aff'ected them that smelled thereof than the scent of 
 wine contenteth those who love to drink : in such sort as the 
 souls, feeding and feasting themselves with these fragrant odours, 
 were very cheerful, jocund and merry ; soasj;9und about the said 
 place there was nothing but pastime, joy, solace, mirth, laughing 
 and singing, much after the manner of men that rejoice one with 
 another, and take all the pleasure and delight that possibly they 
 can.*'- A r i d he said, moreover, that B acchu s by that way mounted 
 up into the society of the^Gods, and afterwards conducted Semele; 
 and withal, that'll wiL^ tailed the place of Lethe, that is to say. 
 Oblivion : wher eupon he wou ld not let Thes^esius, though he 
 were exceeding*^esirous, to slay there, but drew him awaj^er- 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 373 
 
 force ; i nstru cting him thus much and giving him to understand, 
 that reason an d the intelligibl e_part of_the mindjis dissolved and, 
 as it were, melted and moistened l^y ~tEis pleasure ; but the un- 
 reasonable part which, savoureth of the body, being watered and 
 incarnate therewith, ye viveth the memory of the body ; and upon 
 this remembjiance, ^^^rp frrnwpth gnri fj,yisptL•- ^ iiis t andTcon- 
 c upiscence. whichhal ethand dra weth /unto g^enera tio5 (for so~Ee 
 called it), to wit, a consent ot tn" soul thereto, weigJied down and 
 aggravated with over much moisture. Having therefore traversed 
 another way as long as the other, he was ware that he saw al 
 mighty standing bowl into which diverse rivers seemed to fall and! 
 discharge themselves, whereof one was whiter than the foam of the 
 sea or driven snow, another of purple hue or scarlet colour, like to 
 that which appeareth in the rainbow ; as for others, they seemed 
 afar off to have every one of them their distinct lustre and several 
 tincture. But when they approached near unto them, the afore- 
 said bowl, after that the air about was discussed and vanished 
 away, and the different colours, of those rivers no more seen, left 
 the more flourishing colour, except only the white.j Then he saw 
 there three Daemons or Angels sitting together in triangular form, 
 medling and mixing the rivers together with certain measures. 
 And this guide of Thespesius's soul said, moreover, that Orpheus 
 came so far when he went after his wife ; but for that he kept not 
 well in mind that which he there saw, he had sowen one false tale 
 among men ; to wit, that the oracle at Delphi was common to 
 Apollo and the Night ( for there was^nocommerce or fellow ship 
 at all between thaNigh ^^^ ^d Apoll(^ T^ut t his oracl e ("quoth ha) 
 is common to the \I^ f and t he ■Njj£ t;^hich hath n o det erminaJe 
 and certain place^T rpon the Ear th, out is always errant and wander- 
 ing among men by dr eams and appariti ons ; which is the reason 
 that dreams compoun ded and mingled, a s ypu see^ of falsehood and 
 ifety and simplicity, are Spread and scattered o ver 
 But as touching the oracle ot Apollo, neither have 
 (quoth he), nor eve? shall be a Die to see ;^or the 
 te rrene s ubsta nce or earthly part of the sou jr is not permit ted to 
 arise and moimt up on high, but bendetn downward, ^eing fasten ed 
 un to th e body ^ And with that he approached at once nearer, en- 
 deavHuring to shew him the shining light of the three-feet or three- 
 footed stool, which (he said) from the bosom of the goddess Themis 
 reached as far as to the Mount Parnassus. And having a great 
 desire to see the same, yet he could not, his eyes were so dazzled 
 with the brightness thereof ; howbeit, as he passed by, a loud 
 and shrill voice he heard of a woman, who, among other things 
 delivered in metre, uttered also, as it should seem by way of pro- 
 phecy, the very time of hii^ death: and the Daemon said it was 
 the voice of Sibylla ; for she, being carried round in the globe 
 
c 
 
 374 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 and face fl^jhe^^^jjid foretell and sing what was to com e : but 
 bein^ desir ous['Tio ^^mo^ , he was repelled and driven by the 
 violence ~οΓ the jno^, as it were with certain whirl -puffs, clean a 
 contrary way7~so he could hear and understand = but few things, 
 and those v ery sho rt ; namely, the accident about the hill Vesuvius, 
 and how Dicaearchia should be consumed an d bur nt by casual fire, 
 as also a clause or piece of a verse, as touching the emperor who 
 then reigned, to this effect :-^^ 
 
 i A gracious prince he is, but yet must die. 
 
 And empire leave, by force of malady. 
 
 After this they passed on forward to see the pains and torments 
 of those who were punished ; and there at first they beheld all 
 things most piteous and horrible to see to ; for Thespesius, who 
 doubted nothing less, met in that place with many of his friends, 
 kinsfolk, and familiar companions, who were in torment, and 
 suffering dolorous pains and infamous punishment they moaned 
 /themselves, lamenting and calling and crying unto him. At the 
 
 /'^last he had a sight of his own father rising out of a deep pit; full 
 / he ivas of pricks, gashes, and wounds, and stretching forth his 
 
 L- hands unto him, was (mauger his heart) forced to break silence, 
 yea, and compelled by Mose" who had the charge and super- 
 intendence of the said punishments, to confess with a loud and 
 audible voice, that he had been a wicked murderer of certain 
 strangers and guests whom he had lodged in his house ; for 
 perceiving that they had silver and gold about them, he had 
 wrought their death by the means of poison ; and albeit he had 
 not been detected thereof in his lifetime, whiles he was upon the 
 earth, yet here was he co nvicted and had sustained already part 
 of his punishment, and expected to endure the rest afterwards. 
 Now Thespesius durst nrot make_suit_nor intercede for his father, 
 so affrighted he was and astonied ; but desirous to withdraw 
 himself and be gone, he lost sight of that courteous and kind 
 guide of his which all this while had conducted~lLim,''and he saw 
 him no more : 15ut he flight perceive other horrible and hideous 
 spirits who enforced and constrained him to pass further, as if it 
 were necessafy^thaOie should traverse still more ground : so he 
 saw those who were notorious maietactors, in the view of every 
 man (or who in this world had been chastised), how their shadow 
 was here ^tormen ted jwit h less pain , and nothing like to others, as 
 having been feleble^nd imperfect in the reasonless part of the 
 soul, and therefore subject to passions and affections ; but such as 
 were disguised and cloa ked with an ou tward appearance and 
 reputation of virtue ^abro ad, and yet had lived covertly and 
 secretly at home in wickedness, certain that were about them 
 forced some of them to turn the inside outward, and with much 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 375 
 
 pain and grie f to la y themselves open, to bend and bow, and 
 discover their hypoc ritical hearts within, even against their own 
 nature, like unto the scoiopenders of the sea, when they have 
 swallowed downlin hook, are wont to turn themselves outward : 
 but others they flayed and displayed, discovering plainly and 
 openly how faulty, perverse^ Imd vicious" theyhad been within, 
 as whose principal part of the reasonable soul vice~1iad possessed. 
 He said, moreover, that he s aw other so uls wound and interlaced 
 one within anotherptwo, three, and more together, like to vipers 
 and other serpents, and these not forgetting their old grudge and 
 malicious ranker one against anoth er, or upon remembrance of 
 losses and wrongs sustained by others, lell to gnawing andr^ 
 devouring each other. Also, that there were three parallel lakes 
 ranged in equal distance one from the other; t1ie~Dne seething 
 and boiling with gold, another of lead exceeding cold, and a 
 third, mosf rough, consisting of iron : and that there were certain 
 spirits called Daemons which had the overlookin g and charge of 
 them ; and these, like unto metal-founders, or smiths, with certain 
 instruments either plungedTHT^ "drSW out, souls. As for those 
 who were given to filt hy lucr e, and by reason of insatiable avarice 
 committed wicked parts, those they let down into the lake of 
 melted gold, and when they were once set on a light fire, and 
 made transparent by Ihe strength of those flame s within the said 
 lake, then plunged they were into the other of lead ; where after 
 they were congealed and hardened in manner of hail, they trans- 
 ported them anew into the third lake of iron, where they became 
 exceeding black and horrible, and being cracked and broken by 
 reason of their dryness and hardness, they changed their form, 
 and then at last (by his saying) the y wer e thrown again into the 
 foresaid lake of gold, sufi'ering by the means of these changes and 
 mutations intolerable pains. But those souls (quoth he) who 
 made the greatest moan unto him, and seemed most miserablj^ 
 (of all otheffg) to be L6rmen ted, w ere they who, thinking they 
 were escaped and past their punishment, as who had sufi'ered 
 sufficiently for their deserts at the hands of vengeance, were taken 
 again and put to fresh torments ; and those they were for whose 
 sins their children anc^-others^f their posterity sufi'ered punish- 
 ment : for whensoever one of the souls of their children or 
 nephews in lineal descent either met with them, or were brought 
 unto them, the same fell into a fit of anger, crying out upon 
 them, shewing the marks of the torments and pains that it 
 sustained, reproaching and hitting them in the teeth therefor ; 
 but the other, making haste to fly and hide themselves, yet were 
 not able so to do ; for incontinently the tormentors followed after 
 and pursued them, who brought them back again to their punish- 
 ment, crying out and lameirtt ng fur nu thing so m uch as that they 
 
376 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 did foresee the torment which they were to suffer, as having 
 experience thereof already. Furthermore, he said that he saw 
 some, and those in number many, either children or nephews, 
 hanging together fast like bees or bats, murmuring and grumbling 
 for anger, when they remembered and called to mind what 
 sorrows and calamities they sustained for their sake. But the 
 last thing that he saw were the souls of such as entered into 
 a second life and new nativity, as being turned and transformed 
 forcibly into other creatures of all sorts, by certain workmen 
 appointed therefor, who, with tools for the purpose, and many a 
 stroke, forged and framed some of their parts new, bent and 
 wrested others, took away and abolished a third sort ; and all, 
 that they might sort and be suitable to other conditions and 
 lives : among which he espied the soul of Nero afflicted already 
 grievously enough otherwise, with— many calamities, pierced 
 thorough every part with spikes and nails red-hot with fire : 
 and when the artisans aforesaid took it in hand to transform it 
 into the shape of a viper, of which kind (as Piridarus saith) the 
 young ones gnaweth through the bowels of the dam "to come into 
 the world, and to devour it, he said that all on a sudden there 
 shone forth a great l ight o ut of which there was heard a voice 
 giving commandment that ^thfey 's^ouldnSetaiaofphose and trans- 
 figure it into the form of another kind of beast more gentle and 
 tame, forging a water-creature of it, chanting about standing 
 lakes and mafishes ; for thathe had: been in some sort punished 
 already for the sins which he had committed, and besides, some 
 good turn is due unto him from the gods, in that, of all his 
 subjects, he had exempted from tax, tallage, and tribute the best 
 nation and most beloved oi the gods-,~fco^-w;it, the Greeks. Thus 
 far forth, he said, he was only a spectator or^ese matters ; but 
 when he was upon his return, he abid all the pains in the world 
 for very fear that he had ; for there was a certain woman, for 
 visage and stately bigness admirable, who took hold on him, and 
 said : Come hither, that thou mayest keep in memory all that 
 thou hast seen the better : wherewitlr^he ptrfc forth unto him 
 a little rod or wand al^ fiery , ~such as painters or enamellers use ; 
 but there was another that stayed her : and then he might 
 perceive himself to be blowifby a strong and violent wind with 
 a trunk or pipe, so that in the turning of an hand he was within 
 his own body again, and so began to look up with his eyes 
 in manner out of his grave and's^pyehfe. 
 
 Let me now call the^Teader's attention to some points 
 which ought to be noticed in the foregoing Myth. 
 
 The Myth, as I said, is one of a well-marked class of 
 Eschatological 'Mytns (to whicn the Timarcnus TMyth in 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 377 
 
 Plutarch's de G ^nio Socratis also belongs) based on the ritual 
 observed at Initiation, which, indeed, they merely transfer 
 from the sanctuary in this world to the world of spirits. 
 The apparent death of Aridaeus-Thespesius stands in the 
 Myth for the ceremonial death which an initiated person 
 suffers, who, in simulating actual death by falling into a 
 trance, or even by allowing himself to be treated as a corpse, 
 dies to sin in order to live henceforth a regenerate life in this 
 world. The accident which brings on the state of apparent 
 death is a literary device adopted in order to give veri- 
 similitude to the idea that the Soul of Aridaeus-Thespesius 
 actually visits the other world, and returns to this world to 
 tell the tale. By this device the experiences of a newly 
 initiated person returning to ordinary life a regenerate man 
 are transformed into those which an actual revenant from 
 beyond the grave would have to tell. The accident which 
 befalls Aridaeus-Thespesius is, in fact, the mythological 
 equivalent of the βκττληξίς which confounds the candidate at 
 the beginning of his Initiation — an βκττληξίς comparable with 
 the sharpness of death, and resulting in a trance, during 
 which he is ceremonially a dead man. 
 
 Pour acquorir une ame nouvelle (says M. le Comte Goblet 
 d'Alviella),^ " il faut renoncer a Tancienne ; il faut d'abord mourir. 
 Aussi la plupart des initiations impliquent-elles une mort 
 apparente, soit qu'on soumette le noophyte a une immolation 
 simuloe, soit qu'on lui impose un voyage au pays des dofunts. 
 Mourir, disait Plutarque, en jouant sur les mots, c'est etre 
 initio: τελευταν = τελεισ^αι. Reciproquement, pourrait-on aj outer, 
 ^tre initio, c'est mourir. Du moins c'est encourir une mort 
 temporaire pour revivre dans les conditions difforentes et meil- 
 leures. En ce sens I'initiation est bien une ro-generation. II 
 en otait ainsi chez les anciens, aussi bien que parmi les peuplades 
 non civilisoes dont je viens de decrire les coutumes.^ 
 
 Nous voyons par le rocit d'Apuloe que I'initiation aux mysteres 
 d'Isis otait envisagoe comme une mort volontaire conduisant k 
 
 1 Eleusinia (Paris, 1903), p. 63. 
 
 2 o.c. p. 62 : " Daus certaines parties du Congo, les jeunes gens en age de 
 passer hommes feignent de tomber morts. Emportes par les feticheurs dans 
 la foret, ils y passeut plusieurs mois, parfois plusieurs annees ; puis ils ren- 
 trent dans leur famille, mais lis doivent se comporter comme s'ils avaient tout 
 oublio de leur vie anterieure, y compris le langage et I'habitude de se nourrir 
 eux-memes. On doit refaire leur education, comme s'il s'agissait de nouveau- 
 n^s." Cf. W. H. Bentley, Life on the Congo (London, 1887), pp. 78 if. 
 
378 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 une autre vie.^ Les mysteres de Cybfele comprenaient le tauro- 
 bole et le criobole, ou Tinitio, couche dans une fosse, recevait sur 
 le corps le sang d'un taureau ou d'un belier ; des ce moment il 
 devenait tanroholio criobolioque in aeternum renatus.^ Dans I'lnde, 
 aujourd'hui encore, le jeune brahmane qui veut se fair initier 
 k la connaissance du Voda par un gourou doit se soumettre k une 
 coromonie qui le fait protendument repasser a I'otat d'embryon.^ 
 Enfin, au sein du Christianisme, le bapteme qui constitue la for- 
 malito essentielle de Tentr^e dans la communauto des fideles a 
 tou jours έίέ prosent^ comme un ensevelissement symbolique en 
 vue d'une resurrection spirituelle.* On lit sur Tarchitrave du 
 baptistere du Latran, le plus ancien de la chrotiente actuelle, la 
 devise suivante, qu'y avait fait graver, au V^ siecle, le pape 
 Xystus iii. : — 
 
 Caelorum regnum sperate, hoc fonte renati ; 
 
 Non recipit felix vita semel genitos. 
 
 La prestation des voeux, dans certains ordres religieux, qui est 
 une voritable initiation, comprend une colobration de I'office des 
 morts sur le novice coucho dans une biere ou otendu sous un 
 suaire, entre quatre cierges, Apres le chant du Miserere, il se 
 relive, fait le tour de I'assistance en recevant le baiser de paix 
 et va communier entre les mains de I'abbo.^ De ce jour, il prend 
 un nouveau nom qu'il gardera jusqu'a la mort.*^ 
 
 1 Ifet. xi. ~"~' 
 
 '^ Corp. Insc. Lat. vi. p. 97, No. 510. 
 
 ^ Sacred Books of the East, vol. xliv. pp. 86-90. Perhaps we may be allowed 
 to bring into comparison with this custom another custom mentioned by Dr. 
 Budge : speaking of a certain prehistoric form of burial in Egypt, he says 
 (Egyptian Ideas of the Future Στ/β, p. 162 if.): "They are buried in the ante- 
 natal position of a child, and we may perhaps be justified in seeing in this 
 custom the symbol of a hope that as the child is born from this position into the 
 world, so might the deceased be born into the life in the world beyond the 
 grave. . . . The Egyptians continued to mummify their dead, not believing 
 that their physical bodies would rise again, but because they wished the 
 spiritual body to ' sprout ' or ' germinate ' from them, . and if possible — at least 
 ■-it seems so — to be in the form of the physical body." 
 
 ^ Rom. vi. 4, Coloss. ii. 12, "Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye 
 are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised 
 him from the dead." 
 
 ^ Ceremoniale benedictimim, in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique (Paris, 
 Gaume, 1863), t. xix. pp. 184, 185. 
 
 ^ See also Dieterich {Eine MithrasUturgie, pp. 158-161, 166, 175), and 
 authorities cited by him {e.g. Frazer, The Golden Bough, iii. 442 if. ; Codrington, 
 The Melanesians, 39), for the wide prevalence among primitive, as well as among 
 civilised races, of this view of Initiation (whether Initiation at the age of 
 puberty, or at other times) as a Death (simulated by the novice) and a New 
 Birth, followed often by the imposition of a New Name. AVhen ceremonial 
 Death takes the form of actual unconsciousness, a stupefying drink is generally 
 the agent employed. I would suggest that the drinking of the water of Lethe, 
 in Greek mythology, by Souls about to be born again in the flesh, has its origin 
 in this custom of administering a stupefying drink to the patients of initiatory 
 rites, who "die to live." 
 
 "For all Greek mysteries," says Mr. A. Lang [Homeric Hymns, p. 93), "a 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 379 
 
 The Plage of Lethe, in the Aridaeus-Thespesius Myth, is 
 difficult to localise ; hut it is evidently /i place jSouls come 
 to in their descent from the aethereal ana aerfetregions, lying 
 somewhere between these regions and the Earth. The foliage 
 and flowers of the place remind us of the Terrestrial Paradise, 
 midway between Heaven and Earth, in which Dante places 
 the Stream of Lethe. Plutarch's whole description, however, 
 reflects the doctrine, which we afterwards find in Plotinus [ 
 and others of the Neo-Platonic school, ofrthe Mirror and Bowl f 
 of Dionysus, and cannot properly be brought into line with 
 such a description of the Eiver of Lethe as we have in the 
 M vth of Er . In one point, however, the two descriptions 
 seem to be at one — the Place of Lethe is not subterranean. 
 
 The Bowl, th e Oracle of Night and__theJIoon, at which 
 the three Daemons sit, mixing dreams, is, I think, the Moon, 
 above which the Soul of Aridaeus-Thespesius cannot rise, ν 
 because the irrational ^arp^ it is still in rehe b ody on EaftE^ tx^ 
 As we lesLrn^frOmrtiie~^e facie in orbe lunae^ that part, as well 
 as the rationaL^rt, rises, at the death of the body on Earth, 
 up to the MS^^ and it is only when tlfa-^ath of the 
 irrational part~lia^ taken place on tJ|ie,M^^_that the rational 
 part can rise to its original home, ilae Sun. The rational 
 part of the Soul of Andaeu&^Thespesius, then, comes near to, 
 but may not pass, the Moon ; and can only see from afar the 
 glory of the true Delphi which ii=; .s ternal in th e Heavens — 
 the Sun, the sea t o f Apollo, Ae home of Eeaso n? Orpheus, 
 when ""he went to seek Eurydice, came, Aridaeus-Thespesius is 
 told, only as far as the Oracle of Dreams, i.e. the Moon. The 
 celestial or astronomical eschatology, which, in Plutarch, has 
 taken the place of the terrestrial, converts, we thus see, the 
 κατάβασίς Όρφάως into an άνάβασος.^ 
 
 satisfactory savage analogy can be found. These spring straight from human 
 nature ; from the desire to place customs, and duties, and taboos under divine 
 protection ; from the need of strengthening them, and the influence of the _ 
 elders, by mystic sanctions ; from the need of fortifying and trying the young aL•/^ 
 by probations of strength, secrecy, and fortitude ; from the magical expulsion of " *^ 
 hostile influences ; from the sympathetic magic of early agriculture ; from study 
 of the processes of nature regarded as personal ; and from guesses, surmises, 
 visions, and dreams as to the fortunes of the wandering soul on its way to its 
 final home." 
 
 1 Chapters 28-30. 
 
 2 Mr. Arthur Fairbanks (Class. Rev. Nov. 1901), commenting on Soph. Ajax, 
 1192, and quoting Eur. Hel. 1(H6, 1219, Frag. 971, Suppl. 1140, connects the 
 ascension of Souls into the aether with the practice of cremation. 
 
 f 
 
380 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 The torments of Hell or Purgatory are described in the 
 Aridaeus-Thespesius Myth with almost Dantesque power; 
 indeed, the three lakes and the treatment of Souls in them 
 present a picture of terror which it would be hard to out- 
 match in literature. But where is the place of these 
 torments ? Under the Earth ? I think not. The following 
 passage in the de facie in orhe lunae seems to me to be 
 conclusive in favour of locating these torments in the lower 
 region of the air : ττάσαν ^^τνχτιν, άνουν re καΐ συν νω, σώματος 
 €Κ7Γ€σοΰσαν, βΐμαρμβνον εστί τω μεταξύ fyrj^ καϊ σέΧηνης 
 "χωρίω ΊτΧανηθηναί 'χ^ρόνον ουκ ϊσον αλλ αΐ μεν αΒικοι καϊ 
 ακ,οΚαστοι ΒΙκας των άΒικημάτων τίνονσΐ' τας δ' ετηεικβίς, 
 όσον άφα^νευσαι καϊ άτΓοττνεΰσαί άττο του σώματος, ώσττερ 
 αίτιου ΊΓονηρου, μιασμούς, εν τω ττραοτάτω του άερος, pv 
 "Χειμώνας α8ου καΧουσί, 8εΐ ηίνεσθαυ 'χρόνον τίνα τετα^μενον} 
 The conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing passage seems 
 to be borne out by the passage at the beginning of the 
 Aridaeus-Thespesius Myth, where Souls are seen ascending 
 like bubbles — Souls of all sorts, good, bad, and indifferent, 
 each sort distinguished by its own colour ; and the gulf, or 
 γάσμα, whi£h_ Ti marp.hna_S£es in the de geni^^Sacx iiMii Mjth, 
 he sees ^hen he is no longer within s ight of the EarthV it 
 is the place of to"rnient^^-^a~seething'~abyss''^\ir (I tEmk), 
 on the surface of which half-submerged Souls are seen floating, 
 like stars or will-o'-the-wisps.^ At the same time it must 
 be admitted that Plutarch's power of place-visualisation is 
 not so clear and distinct as to leaA^e one without doubt as to 
 the locality of his Place of Torment — it may, after all, be 
 subterranean, not aerial; I am inclined, however, to think 
 that, following undoubted precedent,^ he makes it aerial — 
 that he localises the whole eschatological drama — Inferno, 
 Purgatorio, and Paradise — in the air and aether. 
 
 There is another point of interest which ought to be 
 noticed in connection with the Aridaeus-Thespesius Myth 
 — the remarkably developed power of colour- visualisation of 
 
 ^ Plutarch, de foe. in orhe lun. 28. '-^ De gen. Soc. 22. 
 
 ^ See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 319, n. 4, where the Stoical doctrine of the levity of 
 the Soul is alluded to as incompatible with its κατάβασι$, and Sext. adv. phys. 1, 
 71, is quoted for this — καΐ yap ουδέ ras ψυχάς iveaTLv ύττονοησαι κάτω φβρομένα^. 
 XcTTTO/Aepets yap οΰσαι els τοΜ άνω μάλλον τόττονζ κουφοφορονσι. See supra, 
 p. 367, η. 2, for the local i^iation of Hell in the Third Heaven by the writer of 
 the Secrets of Enoch. 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 381 
 
 which it affords evidence. Effects of light, lustre, and colour 
 constantly appeal to us. But, on the other hand, the power 
 of place-and-form-visualisation seems to be deficient, or, at 
 any rate, not to be developed equally with that of colour- 
 visualisation. Plutarch's other great Eschatological Myth — 
 that in the de genio Socratis — likewise affords evidence of 
 highly developed power of colour-visualisation with, at any 
 rate, comparatively little power of place-and-form-visualisa- 
 tion.^ Highly developed power of visualising in both kinds 
 — in both^colour and form — is indeed a rare gift. Dante 
 had it. G^lace and Form are as distinct in the Inferno and 
 Purgatorio as Light and Colour are glorious in the Paradiso. 
 Plato visualise s Place and Form/^th great distinctness, but 
 not, I^Think^ with Dante's convincing di stinc tness ; the 
 Abstract T hinker competed, in Plai^ ^ifwith the Poet to a much 
 greater extent than in Dante. In power of colour-visualisa- 
 tion, ho weverT' Dante is greatly Plato's superior ; and com- 
 paring Plato and Plutarch in this respect, I would say that 
 the latt^g^s, at any rate, more evidence of the possession 
 ihan the former doe^^ Against tne remarkable 
 colour ^^cts^of the Myths in the de genio Socratis and the 
 de sera numinis vindicta, we can only set, from P lato's M ythisf^ 
 some much more ordinary effects — that of the description, in 
 the Phaedo Myth, of the party-coloured Earth seen from above, 
 that of the colour of the Stygian Eegion in the same Myth, 
 that of the rainbow-coloured pillar in the Myth of Er, and 
 certain general effects of light conveyed by words here and 
 there in the Phaedrus Myth. This is not the place to pursue 
 the subject of the relation of highly developed power of 
 colour-visualisation and highly developed power of form- 
 visualisation to each other and to other faculties in the Man 
 of Science and the Poet respectively. It is a subject which 
 has special importance for the psychology of the poetical 
 temperament, and deserves more attention, in that connection, 
 than it has hitherto received ; although invaluable service has 
 already been done, in the way of laying the foundation from 
 which any such special inquiry must start, by Mr. F. Galton 
 in his Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development 
 (1883), to which the reader is now referred. 
 
 ^ This Myth is given on pp. 441 ff. 
 
382 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 VI 
 
 η άτΓο Μουσώι/ κατοκω'χτ} re καΧ μανία ^ 
 
 It was maintained in the Introductory Part of this work 
 that the Poet performs his essential function as Poet only in 
 so far as he rouses Transcendental Feeling in his patient, 
 and that he does so by inducing in him the state of dream- 
 consciousness. It is characteristic of this state, as induced 
 by the Poet, that it does not continue for any appreciable 
 length of time, but takes the form of fitfully recurrent lapses 
 in the midst of a waking consciousness, which it is also the 
 Poet's function — but only as skilled workman, not as inspired 
 Poet — to furnish with suitable objects. As workman the 
 Poet must have skill to tell a story, whether in narrative, 
 or in dramatic or in lyrical form, whether true or fictitious, 
 which shall be interesting to the waking consciousness as 
 a story — which shall appeal powerfully to our natural love of 
 ''anthropology," and to other common sentiments of the 
 human breast. The interesting story, with its appeal to our 
 common sentiments, constitutes, as it were, the Body of the 
 poem, and bulks largely — 
 
 She would na ha'e a Lowland Laird, 
 
 Nor be an English Lady ; 
 But she's awa wi' Duncan Graham, 
 
 An' he's row'd her in his plaidie. 
 
 This is " what the poem is about " — its subject matter, its 
 Body — and is always with us. But the Soul — the essential 
 Poetry of a poem, is apprehended only at those moments 
 when the common sentiments — wonder, love, pity, dread, 
 curiosity, amusement — roused by the workman's artistic 
 handling of the subject-matter, are satisfied fantastically, as 
 in a dream, by some image presented or suggested, or by some 
 
 ^ Phaedrus, 245 a : τρίτη δέ άττό Μουσώϊ' κατοκωχή re καΐ μανία λαβοΰσα 
 άττάλην καΐ &βατον ψνχην iyeipovaa καΐ έκβακχεύονσα κατά re φδα'ί και κατά. 
 τ^ν άΧλην ΤΓοίησιν μνρία των τταλαίών ^pya κοσμούσα τού$ iiTLyLyv ο μένουν 
 ΊΓαώβύεί. 6j δ' tv &vev μανία% Μ,ουσων έττΐ ποιητικά^ θύρα$ άφίκηται, ireLffdeis ώ$ 
 άρα έκ τέχνψ Ικανο% ποιητψ έσ6μενο%, ατελής αύτόί re καΐ η ττοίησις ύττό τηί 
 των μαινόμενων η του σωφρανοΰντοζ ήφανίσθη. 
 
 Plato's Ion should be read in connection with this. It is a study of " Poetic 
 Inspiration. " 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 383 
 
 mysterious omen of word or phrase or cadence. It is in 
 giving such satisfaction to natural sentiments which his art 
 has aroused in his patient that the Poet shows his genius 
 as distinguished from his art. His gift is a sort of μαντική 
 καθ' νπνον. In sleep some ordinary sensation of cold, or 
 heat, or of some other kind, starts an explanatory pageant 
 of dream-images. So in the Poet's mind some common senti- 
 ment, which he experiences more vividly than other men as 
 he tells his story, expresses itself suddenly in some image or 
 other representation ; and his reader, in whose mind he has 
 already roused the same sentiment by his story, welcomes the 
 image or other representation, as expressing the sentiment — 
 as relieving the weight of it, as solving the mystery of 
 it, as justifying it. It is in a dream, fantastically, that the 
 relief, the solution, the justification, are found; for the Poet's 
 image, the product in him of the dream-consciousness, becomes 
 in the Poet's patient the producer of a state of consciousness 
 like that which produced it in the Poet. The case is 
 analogous to that of one mimicking or dwelling on the out- 
 ward expression of a mental state in another, and having the 
 state thereby produced by reaction in himself. 
 
 The dream-state produced in the patient by the reaction 
 on his consciousness of the imagery, and other dream-products, 
 supplied by the genius of the Poet, though it lasts as dream- 
 state but for a moment, yet leaves an effect behind which 
 persists more or less sensibly throughout the waking con- 
 sciousness which follows ; and if the lapses into the dream- 
 state induced by a poem are frequent, the effect, persisting in 
 the waking consciousness which apprehends the subject-matter, 
 becomes always more and more impressive. This effect may 
 be described as a feeling of having lately been in some Βαψόνως 
 τότΓος, where the true reasons of the things which happen in 
 this world of ordinary experience are laid up ; a Place in 
 which one understood the significance of these things, although 
 one cannot now explain what one then understood. In the 
 Phaedrus Myth, where the Souls peep over the edge of the 
 Cosmos for a moment into the irehiov αληθβίας beyond, and 
 then sink down into the region of the sensible, this feeling of 
 " having just now understood the true significance of things " 
 is pictorially rendered. 
 
384 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 I venture to urge on those who discuss that vexed 
 question — " What is Poetic Truth ? " the importance of not 
 neglecting this " feeling of having just now understood the 
 true significance of things " — a feeling which, of course, is 
 experienced pretty generally, and quite apart from the in- 
 fluence of Poetry, although in the case of those who come 
 under that influence it is so elaborately procured and regu- 
 lated as to become an important factor in their lives. When 
 we are told by the exponents of " Poetic Truth," from Aristotle 
 downwards, that it is the " Universal," — that " Poetry sets 
 forth the Universal," — we are not asked to believe that there 
 are Universals (in the plural) of Poetry like those of Science 
 — principles supplied by Poetry which explain particulars, or 
 furnish some definite guidance in respect of them, as, e.g., the 
 Law of Gravitation " explains " the orbits of the planets, or 
 even as the " Principles of Economics " furnish guidance in 
 particular cases arising in the course of business. If, then, 
 the exponents of " Poetic Truth " do not claim for the " Uni- 
 versal" of Poetry that it provides any such explanation or 
 guidance in detail, what do they understand it to be and do ? 
 
 It seems to me that their exposition amounts to this : — 
 The Universal of Poetry is that which does for the details of 
 the Poet's interesting Story or Picture what " Knowledge of 
 the Good " does for the objects of Conduct : it is olov το φως, 
 as it were a Light, in which they are bathed and altered 
 — an atmosphere of solemn elemental feeling through 
 which we see the representations of Poetry, as we see the 
 presentations of Social Life — its claims and temptations — 
 through the medium of the Sense of Duty. If this is 
 what the doctrine of the " Universal of Poetry," as ex- 
 pounded by those who have written on the subject, amounts 
 to, I am entirely in agreement with them. I am merely 
 putting their doctrine in other words when I state my own 
 view as follows : — The " Universal of Poetry " is apprehended 
 by us when, having entered at the beck of the Poet, our μυστα- 
 yωy6ς, into the vast wonderland of the dream-consciousness, 
 we presently return therefrom to the waking world of his 
 interesting story, and see its particulars again with the eyes 
 of revenants who now know their secret meaning — or rather, 
 know that they have a secret meaning — that they represent, 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 385 
 
 here in the world of our ordinary observations and sentiments, 
 the truth of a deeper order of reality. So, Plato ^ will have 
 his Guardians believe that the particular events of their lives 
 here are but representative doubles of things which are accom- 
 plished in a real life behind : the Guardians are to be told 
 that " their youth was a dream " — that they merely imagined 
 that they were being educated here : in reality, all the while, 
 it was elsewhere, in the womb of their Mother Earth, that 
 they were being fashioned and nurtured. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I do not underrate the 
 importance in Poetry of all that appeals to our love of 
 " anthropology." The Odyssey must be interesting as, say, the 
 Voyages of Columbus are interesting ; the Songs of Burns and 
 Goethe must be interesting as the common sentiments and 
 experiences which they set forth are interesting to us all in 
 our own lives and the lives of our neighbours. Minute 
 character-drawing, the picturesque portrayal of people as they 
 strike the eye in their surroundings, dramatic representation 
 of their doings and fortunes, and description of the natural 
 world, especially as scene of man's adventures and musings — 
 all these, in their proper places, must be supplied by the Poet ; 
 but they are what I have called the Body of Poetry — they 
 constitute the 'material which the Soul of Poetry inspires. 
 The material must, indeed, be interesting to the waking con- 
 sciousness, if it is to be inspired ; but it may well be interest- 
 ing without being inspired. The inspiration, I have argued, 
 if it comes, comes from the dream-consciousness. The Soul of 
 Poetry is apprehended in its Body at the moment when we 
 awake from the " Poet's Dream," and on a sudden see the passing 
 figures and events of his interesting story arrested in their 
 temporal flight, like the " brede of marble men and maidens " 
 on the Grecian Urn, and standing still, sub specie aeternitatis, 
 as emblems — of what ? — of Eternal Verities, the purport of which 
 we cannot now recall ; but we know that they are valid, and are 
 laid up in that other world from which we are newly returned.^ 
 
 ^ Repvblic, 414. 
 
 2 See Plotinus, Enn. vi. 9. 9 and 10 : speaking of the return from the ecstatic 
 to ordinary consciousness, he says — δύσφραστον rb ^^α//α (what was seen in the 
 ecstatic state). ttiDs ya.p &»* άτταγγάλειέ tis ώ$ irepov ουκ Ιδών 4κ€Ϊνο Ore έθεατο 
 irepov, άλλα Iv irpbt εαυτόν ; and ^e infra, p. 387, where it is contended that the 
 feeling of being "one with the world" is that experienced when great poetry 
 exerts its influence most powerfully. 
 
 2c 
 
386 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 It may be objected that " Poetic Truth " is not rated 
 highly enough when its " Universal " is identified with a 
 " vague feeling " of some inexplicable significance attaching to 
 objects and sentiments, within the sphere of ordinary experi- 
 ence, which are brought before us in the Poet's story. The 
 patent fact that Poetry " elevates " men's lives may be urged 
 against a view which reduces its " Truth " to the low level, it 
 may be thought, of a feeling of the " Irrational Part of the 
 Soul." I would meet this objection by referring to what I 
 have said about the relation of the conscious Self of waking 
 experience — the sensitive and rational Self — to the Self of 
 the dream-consciousness, and of both to the unconscious Self 
 of the " Vegetative Part of the Soul," in which they have 
 their roots. The Vegetative Part, I argued, is the principle 
 within us which inspires the conscious life with that which 
 is the foundation of conduct, and (when we turn to specula- 
 tion) the beginning and end of Metaphysics — that faith in 
 reality and goodness in the strength of which we struggle on, 
 seeking ever new experiences and adventures. I put no 
 slight, therefore, upon the " Universal of Poetry " if I ascribe 
 it to the inspiration of this fundamental principle making 
 itself felt in consciousness, not in the normal form of implicit 
 belief in the "Worth of Life, but less normally as the dream- 
 intuition of a ground of that belief The Metaphysician is 
 too often found trying to set forth a ground which shall be 
 plain to the Understanding, forgetting that 
 
 Thou canst not prove the Nameless, 
 Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in, 
 For nothing worthy proving can be proven, 
 Nor yet disproven. 
 
 The Poet does better : he induces the dream-intuition of a 
 ground, and leaves us with the wonder of the vision haunting 
 our minds when we wake to pursue the details of his interest- 
 ing story. 
 
 But in what form, it will be asked, does this ground of 
 our faith present itself to the dream -consciousness ? It 
 presents itself, I would answer, as "another world" one, 
 unchanging, good, certified, by the testimony of one swift 
 act of perfect intuition, to exist beyond, or rather within, the 
 
THE PHAEDEUS MYTH 387 
 
 world of multiplicity and change and trouble which the senses 
 and understanding present to us ; and, recapitulating all that 
 I have said in this section, and other parts of this work, I 
 would describe the way in which the Poet brings us to this 
 intuition as follows : — 
 
 The Poet, by means of words, makes us, his patients, see 
 those wondrous images of the familiar things of human life 
 and experience which he himself sees.^ We dream his dream. 
 But, in a moment, our dream is past, and we see, with the 
 waking mind's eye, the familiar things which, a moment 
 before — or was it not ages ago ? — were so wondrously trans- 
 formed for the dreaming mind's -eye. Henceforth all is 
 changed. Whatever bit of interesting human life and ex- 
 perience the Poet has taken for his "subject," — be it the 
 situation which appeals to tender sentiment in a love-song, 
 the action which appeals to pity, fear, grief, risibility, expect- 
 ant curiosity, in a play, the world of nature which appeals to 
 us as scene of man's adventures and musings, in a poem of 
 observation and reflection, — whatever be the interesting bit of 
 human life and experience which the Poet has presented to 
 us, it is now, for us also, no longer a mere particular experi- 
 ence. We now see this bit of common experience in a setting 
 of mysterious feeling. When we try to explain to ourselves 
 what this mysterious feeling is which can so wondrously 
 transfigure a bit of common experience, we are fain to borrow 
 the language of logic, and speak of it as a " Universal " — 
 " the particular," we say, " is no longer a particular : it bears 
 the image of the Universal, reflects the light of the Uni- 
 versal." But this so-called " Universal " is no conceptual 
 product of the logical understanding : the logical understand- 
 ing, like the senses, regards the World as a number of more or 
 less connected items external to itself; but this feeling which 
 is come over us is the feeling of being one with the World. 
 This feeling of being one with the World is the reflection, in 
 consciousness, of the condition of that unconscious " Vegetative 
 
 1 ' ' Als die einfachste und richtigste Definition der Poesie mochte icli diese 
 aufstellen, dass sie die Kunst ist, durch Worte die Einbildungskraft ins Spiel 
 zu versetzeu" (Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille tend Vorstelhmg, ii. 484). 
 Poesis est genus doctrinae, verbis plerumque adstrictum, rebus solutuni et 
 licentiosum ; itaque ad phanta#iam refertur, quae iniqua et illicita prorsus 
 rerurn conjugia et divortia comminisci et machinari solet (Bacon, de Aiogyn. 
 Sc. ii. cap. 13). 
 
388 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Soul " in us which is the foundation of our conscious life — 
 which, by its continuous activity, sustains the broken activities 
 of our conscious life, and correlates them, and inspires us with 
 invincible faith in a real World, as part of which, or as one 
 with which, it is good to live. This faith is the stuff out of 
 which the Thinking Faculty, in course of time, constructs its 
 preposterous " ontology," or theory of a real World in which, 
 and of which, it is good to be — a theory which consists in 
 the production of ex post facto reasons for what Transcendental 
 Feeling, representing, in consciousness, the condition of the 
 unconscious " Vegetative Soul " in us, lays down as a sure 
 first principle, — that behind, or rather within, the temporal 
 world of particular items presented to us in the life of the 
 senses and understanding, — behind the world of " phenomena 
 which we can never explain " and " passions of which we have 
 not yet formed clear and distinct ideas," there is an eternal 
 World — one, unchangeable good. This is the World which the 
 "Vegetative Part of the Soul" puts its trust in; and the 
 other " Parts," sensitive and rational, follow its lead — with 
 increasing hesitation and scepticism as " higher " operations of 
 consciousness come into play : but yet they follow — 
 
 ayov Se μ' ω Zev και συ y' η ΐΐζττρωμίνη 
 OTTOi ΤΓοθ' νμΐν ^Ιμι 8iaT€Tay μ^νος ' 
 ω? 'ίψομαί γ' αοκνο<ζ• ην δε μη ^βλω, 
 κακό? yev6μevos, οΰδει/ ^ττον 'ίψομαι. 
 
 Το feel of a sudden that there is surely an eternal World 
 behind, or within, the temporal world of particular items, is 
 to experience the κάθαρσος which Poetry — one among other 
 agencies — effects in us. 
 
 I would conclude this Section with some remarks on 
 the place of Metrical Form — melodious and rhythmic 
 diction — and of Imagination, or Eepresentation, respectively 
 in Poetry. 
 
 If the essential function of Poetry, as Poetry, is to rouse 
 Transcendental Feeling by inducing lapses into the state of 
 dream-consciousness, it is easy to see that metrical form is helpful 
 towards the exercise of this function. Metrical form repre- 
 sents song and dance, both natural expressions of, and both 
 powerfully reacting on, those modes of what may be called 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 389 
 
 Empirical ^ Feeling which have been most influential in the 
 development of man as social being — sympathy with kinsmen 
 and associates, joy and sorrow, love and hatred, confidence and 
 fear, experienced by each man in common with the other 
 members of his tribe.^ When we civilised men are subjected 
 to the influence of metrical diction, we are visited, in our soli- 
 tude, by faint shadows, as it were, of those actual feelings 
 which social song and dance expressed and strengthened in 
 primitive man. As experiencing these feelings in this shadowy 
 form, we are, ipso facto, withdrawn from the current world of 
 actual feelings, sense-impressions, and concepts of the under- 
 standing, and carried away to the confines of the dream-world 
 into which it is the peculiar ofi&ce of the Poet to transport us, 
 in order that we may see, just for a moment, the creations 
 with which he has filled it, and then may return, surrounded 
 by an atmosphere of Transcendental Feeling, to see, in the 
 waking world of his interesting story, the doubles of these 
 creations reflecting, each with its own specific tint, the solemn 
 light of that feeling. But is metrical form absolutely necessary 
 to the exercise of this peculiar of&ce of Poetry ? For an answer 
 to this question I go to a great poet, than whom there is none 
 greater, I think, whether he be judged by power of rousing 
 Transcendental Feeling or by mastery of the art of versifica- 
 tion — to Coleridge. " The writings of Plato," he says,^ " and 
 
 ^ I venture to speak of "Empirical Feeling" as distinguished from "Tran- 
 scendental Feeling." Empirical Feeling has such modes as love, hate, fear, anger, 
 surprise ; they are specifically marked off from one another, and are always 
 experienced each in a set of circumstances, or in relation to some object, which 
 is specifically marked off from other sets of circumstances or other objects. These 
 modes of feeling accordingly, like the objects which arouse them, come into con- 
 sciousness, or supervene ; they are a posteriori data of consciousness — empirically 
 received. But Transcendental Feeling — Faith in the Worth of Life — is not a 
 datum of conscious experience, like this or that mode of Empirical Feeling ; it 
 does not merely supervene or come into consciousness ; it is already involved 
 in consciousness ; it is the a priori condition of conscious activity ; if we had it 
 not, we should not endure to live and seek after the a posteriori data which make 
 the content of life. 
 
 ^ '* Circling in the common dance, moving and singing in the consent of com- 
 mon labour, the makers of earliest poetry put into it those elements without which 
 it cannot thrive now. ... It is clear from the study of poetic beginnings that 
 poetry in its larger sense is not a natural impulse of man, simply as man. His 
 rhythmic and kindred instincts, latent in the solitary state, found free play only 
 under communal conditions, and as powerful factors in the making of society." — 
 Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry (1901), p. 473. I find much that I can 
 agree with in Prof. Gummere'^book ; but I think that he (together with many 
 others) is wrong in making metrical form essential to Poetry. 
 
 3 Coleridge, Biogr. Lit. ch. xiv. 
 
390 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Bishop Taylor, and the Theoria Sacra of Burnet, furnish 
 undeniable proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist 
 without metre, and even without the contradistinguishing 
 objects of a poem ;" and again,^ " Metre in itself is simply a 
 stimulant of the attention ... I write in metre, because I 
 am about to use a language different from that of prose." The 
 evidence of Wordsworth is to the same effect ; but as he is not 
 a great master of versification, as Coleridge is, his evidence 
 may be thought, perhaps, to be less valuable : — " It has been 
 shown that the language of Prose," Wordsworth says in the 
 Preface to the Second Edition of his Poems (including Lyrical 
 Ballads), " may yet be well adapted to Poetry ; and it was pre- 
 viously asserted that a large portion of the language of every 
 good poem can in no respect differ from that of good Prose. 
 We will go farther. It may be safely affirmed that there 
 neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the 
 language of Prose and metrical composition. ... I here use 
 the word ' Poetry ' (though against my own judgment) as 
 opposed to the word Prose, and synonymous with metrical com- 
 position. But much confusion has been introduced into criticism 
 by this contradistinction of Poetry and Prose, instead of the 
 more philosophical one of Poetry and Matter of Pact, or Science. 
 The only strict antithesis to Prose is Metre ; nor is this, in 
 truth, a strict antithesis, because lines and passages of metre so 
 naturally occur in writing prose, that it would be scarcely 
 possible to avoid them, even were it desirable." If this 
 evidence, as coming from one who is no great master of versi- 
 fication, be thought lightly of, it ought, on the other hand, to 
 be remembered that Wordsworth is Coleridge's peer in power 
 of rousing Transcendental Peeling, and exercises this power 
 often through the medium of studiously prosaic diction. His 
 Poetry, therefore, is evidence, apart altogether from his critical 
 opinion just quoted, in favour at least of the view that full 
 poetic effect can be produced where the diction is hardly dis- 
 tinguishable from that of prose. 
 
 The view maintained by Coleridge and Wordsworth ^ is 
 not, it would seem, orthodox. Kecent critics of Poetry are 
 
 1 Coleridge, o.c. ch. xviii. 
 
 2 j^nd Shelley, A Defence of Poetry : "The distinction between poets and 
 prose writers is a vulgar error. " 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 391 
 
 generally in favour of the view that metrical form is an 
 essential condition of the existence of " Poetry." ^ 
 
 Now, the difference between a great poet himself and 
 critics of the ars poetica who are not, and do not pretend to 
 be, great poets, or even poets at all, appears to me to be worth 
 defining ; and I venture to define it as follows : — 
 
 A great poet, like Wordsworth or Coleridge, is so intent 
 upon the End of Poetry that he uses the means with little 
 thought of what they happen to be in themselves. Critics of 
 Poetry, on the other hand, even when they are endowed with 
 personal feeling for the End of Poetry, are apt, as critics, to 
 take that End for granted, and devote their attention exclu- 
 sively to the very interesting subject of the means whereby it 
 is achieved. They assume that, of course, a great poet pro- 
 duces " poetic effect " ; but not cherishing that effect as a 
 personal experience to be received with undiminished wonder 
 and joy whenever they read his poetry, they are apt, in their 
 capacity of critics, to lose clear sight of it, and then to mistake 
 for part of it something entirely distinct from it — the mere 
 aesthetic effect produced by the melody and rhythm un- 
 doubtedly present in most cases where there is Poetry. This 
 mistake, I venture to think, lurks in the following definition 
 of " Poetry," which may be taken as expressing the view of a 
 large, and in some respects, meritorious class of critics — those 
 who are impressed by the " necessity of considering literature 
 as material of science " : — " Poetry is literature, usually of a 
 high degree of Human Interest, which, in addition to its 
 Human Interest, has in it an added Aesthetic Interest," i.e. 
 appeals to " an aesthetic sense of rhythm." ^ Here it may be 
 that " high Human Interest " — though said to be only 
 " usually " present — stands for the End of Poetry as Words- 
 worth and Coleridge understand it ; but the attainment of 
 this end is made entirely dependent on successful appeal to 
 
 ^ A collection of opinions on this subject, I should think pretty nearly com- 
 plete, and certainly somewhat embarrassing by reason of the often very minute 
 differences recorded, will be found in Professor Gummere's work, The Beginnings 
 of Poetry (1901) ; see also Professor Butcher's Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and 
 Fine Art, pp. 143-147, and Mr. AdamVnote on Republic, 601 B, 9. Plato and 
 Aristotle both make μυθο% the essential thing in Poetry : μέτρον is ancillary : see 
 Phacdo, 61 b, and Poet. 1451 b 29, quoted by ilr. Adam. 
 
 'An Irdrodxiction to the iicientific Study of English Poetry, by Mark H. 
 Liddell (1902), pp. 72 and 65. See also Gummere, o.c. ch. ii., "Rhythm as the 
 Essential Fact of Poetry." 
 
392 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 the aesthetic sense of rhythm — metrical form is made absolutely 
 necessary to the exercise of the essential function of Poetry. 
 Indeed, so vital is the connection between "metre" and 
 " poetry " conceived to be, that we are asked to regard the 
 rhythmic structure of the diction as only the outer form of a 
 " rhythmic structure of ideation " : there can be no Poetry 
 where there is not only a rhythmic structure of diction, but a 
 rhythmic structure of ideation.^ 
 
 While maintaining that not only is "Verse Form 
 Interest" ^ — successful appeal to the aesthetic sense of rhythm 
 — no part of the true poetic effect, but that metrical form is 
 not essential, even as means, to the production of true poetic 
 effect, I, of course, am ready to admit that, when metrical 
 form is absent, poetic effect is produced with greater difficulty 
 than when that form is present ; for the appeal made to the 
 Self of the dream-consciousness is so much the weaker as 
 being made solely through dream-scenery, without the aid of 
 the nascent emotion accompanying the suggested Song and 
 Dance. But dream-scenery suggested by the plainest prose is 
 often, I submit, enough, by itself, to make the milieu in which 
 it is possible to experience the true poetic effect. This could 
 be illustrated abundantly from the Icelandic Sagas. On the 
 other hand, it is often the case that the destruction of the 
 metrical form, dream-scenery being left untouched, destroys 
 that milieu : of this Plato gives us an amusing example in 
 Republic y 393 Ε ff., where Eiad, i. 17 ff., is turned into prose; 
 and, as Professor Gummere asks,^ " What would be left in prose, 
 any prose, of Goethe's Ueler alien Gipfeln ist Buh! ί " Nothing 
 of that "particular poem certainly, the original diction of which 
 is metrical. But, I submit, there are poems the original 
 diction of which is not metrical. Because a poem, originally 
 composed in metrical form, is spoilt as a poem by translation 
 into prose, it does not follow that " prose " is impossible as the 
 original form in which a poem may be composed. " There is no 
 valid test for the historian save this test of rhythm," says Pro- 
 fessor Gummere.* It is a rough test — convenient, I dare say, 
 for the purpose of the historian ; but the philosophical student 
 cannot accept it as having any value for his own purpose. 
 
 1 Liddell, o.c. p. 145. 2 ^^ ^. p. 74. 
 
 3 o.c. p. 49. ^ o.c. pp. 49, 50. 
 
THE PHAEDBUS MYTH 393 
 
 I would class metrical form, then, along with interesting 
 story and skilful word-painting, as a part — an important, but 
 not absolutely necessary part — of the milieu in which the 
 genius of the Poet finds it possible to produce poetic effect in 
 his patient; that effect itself, of course, being something 
 essentially distinct from the interest felt in the story, from 
 the specific emotions roused by its incidents and scenery, or 
 from the ττάθος caused (it may be, first of all in the vocal 
 chords ^) by the rhythm and melody of the words, whether 
 spoken or unspoken. In the milieu of imagery and emotion 
 produced by the Poet's story or description, especially when it 
 is couched in melodious language,^ the Poet's patient is ready 
 to experience, when the " psychological moment " arrives, that 
 sudden flash of Transcendental Feeling in which, I contend, 
 the essence of poetical effect consists. 
 
 I venture to think that the exaggerated importance attached 
 to metrical form, regarded as an essential condition of poetic 
 effect, has been responsible for the comparatively scanty atten- 
 tion paid by recent writers on the nature of Poetry to the 
 immensely important part played by Eepresentation, simply 
 as Eepresentation, in the creation of what I have called the 
 poetic milieu, to distinguish it from poetic effect. The Greek 
 identification of 7Γοίησι<ζ with μίμησις seems to me to have 
 the root of the matter in it, if we understand by μίμησι^ the 
 production'of the poetic milieu, and take κάθαρσις (as it appears 
 in Aristotle's Poetics) to stand for the poetic effect — the flash 
 of Transcendental Feeling in that milieu. 
 
 The Poetic milieu, as I have argued throughout this work, 
 is a state of dream-consciousness — not, indeed, shut off, as in 
 sleep, from the waking state, but concurrent with, or inserted 
 into, it. As we read or listen to Poetry we are in a day- 
 dream. We are, indeed, aware of the " real things " of this 
 world round about us ; and yet we are in another world, not 
 of " real things," but of representations, imitations, pictures, 
 
 ^ "I believe that with careful self- observation many men 'with an ear for 
 verse' will recognise that the essential part of poetic excitation has lain in scarcely 
 perceptible changes of tension in the muscles of the throat " (Myers, Human Per- 
 sonality, i. 102). I confess that it is with much astonishment that I find Myers 
 among those who make the sense of nascent melodious speech in the vocal chords 
 the essential condition of experiencing poetic effect. 
 
 2 Mr. W. B. Yeats in his book, The Idea of Good and Evil, p. 16, propounds 
 the charming idea of "poems spoken to a harp." 
 
394 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 reflections. These reflections resemble the " real things " — 
 and yet, they are quite different from them — as different as 
 the upside-down trees in the pool of water are different from 
 the real trees of which they are reflections. The reflections 
 of Poetry, like those of the pool, are in another world. What 
 do they mean ? They are more beautiful than the " real 
 things " of this world. The " real things " therefore cannot 
 account for them. They are copies surely of " eternal things " 
 existing somewhere. Where ? Such is the reasoning, and 
 such is the final άττορία, or impasse, of the dream-consciousness 
 which the Poet can induce in his patient simply by means of 
 Representation. Sometimes the patient does not get beyond 
 the αττορία or impasse ; sometimes — and this is to experience 
 the true poetic effect — the impasse is opened for a moment, 
 the άίΓορία is solved in a swift act of intuition — too swift, 
 alas I for the truth revealed to be retained in the memory : 
 
 Vedela tal, che, quando il mi ridice, 
 lo non lo intendo, si parla sottile 
 Al cor dolente, che lo fa parlare.^ 
 
 I have spoken of objects reflected in a pool of water. The 
 feeling which such reflections cause is, I think, very nearly 
 akin to that which poetic μίμησίς causes. The phantasms of 
 real things in water, in painting, in word-painting, lend 
 themselves to the feeling that there is " another world." 
 They are seen in a strange light and atmosphere, and, as we 
 look at them, the world of waking experience recedes, and 
 we pass into dreamland — as we do sometimes on a still 
 autumn evening when we see familiar houses and trees 
 silhouetted against the pure sky, like things in a picture 
 which we now look at for the first time with wonder and 
 eerie surmise. 
 
 Shelley's rendering of the feeling produced by reflections in 
 water is worth careful consideration as a great poet's record 
 of an experience which is closely related to, if not identical 
 with, that produced by poetical " Imitation," or " Eepre- 
 sentation." I close this section by quoting his lines ^ as an 
 answer — not the less valuable because not intended by the 
 
 ^ Vita Nuova, Sonetto xxv. 
 2 y^g Recollection. 
 
THE PHAEDRUS MYTH 395 
 
 ( 
 poet himself to be an answer — to the question, What is the 
 end of Poetry, and how does Imitation subserve that end ? 
 
 We paused beside the pools that lie 
 
 Under the forest bough, 
 Each seemed as 'twere a httle sky 
 
 Gulfed in a world below ; 
 A firmament of purple light, 
 
 Which in the dark earth lay, 
 More boundless than the depth of night, 
 
 And purer than the day — 
 In which the lovely forests grew, 
 
 As in the upper air. 
 More perfect both in shape and hue 
 
 Than any spreading there. 
 There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn, 
 
 And through the dark-green wood 
 The white sun twinkling like the dawn 
 
 Out of a speckled cloud. 
 Sweet views which in our world above 
 
 Can never well be seen, 
 Were imaged by the water's love 
 
 Of that fair forest green. 
 And all Avas interfused beneath 
 
 With an Elysian glow, 
 An atmosphere without a breath, 
 
 A softer day below. 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 
 
 Context 
 
 The subject of the Symposium, like that of its companion 
 Dialogue^ the Phaedrus, is Love. 
 
 The subject is treated, from various points of view, in 
 speeches made, in succession, by those present at a Banquet 
 in the house of Agathon the tragedian — by Phaedrus, by 
 Pausanias, by JEryximachus, by Aristophanes, by Agathon 
 himself, by Socrates reporting the Discourse of Diotima the 
 Woman of Mantinea, and lastly by Alcibiades. 
 
 Two of these speeches — that of Aristophanes, and that of 
 Diotima, reported by Socrates — are Myths. 
 
 897 
 
398 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Symposium 1 8 9 c- 1 9 3 D. 
 
 189 C Έιμ,οϊ yap Βοκονσιν ανθρωττοΰ τταντάιτασι την του 6ρωτο<ζ 
 
 Βύναμίν ουκ τ}σθησθαι,, iirel αίσθανόμενοί ye μeyLστ αν 
 αυτού lepa κατασκεύασαν καΐ βωμοίίζ καΐ θυσίας αν ττοιβΐν 
 μeyίστa<ζ, ούχ ωσττβρ νυν τούτων ούΒβν yLyveTau ττερϊ αυτόν, 
 
 D δεοι/ ττάντων μάΚιστα yίyveσθai,. βστί yap θέων φίλανθρω- 
 ΤΓοτατος, βττίκουρός Τ6 ων των ανθρώπων καΐ Ιατρός τούτων, 
 ων Ιαθάντων μ6yίστη ευδαιμονία αν τω άνθρωττβίω yivet 
 €Ϊη. iyo) οΰν ττβιράσομαί ύμΐν €L•σηyησaσθaύ την Βύναμον 
 αυτού, ύμεΐς δε των αλΧων ΒιΒάσκαΧοι βσεσθβ. δεΓ δε 
 ττρώτον υμάς μαθβΐν την άνθρωττίνην φύσιν καΐ τα τταθήματα 
 αυτής. Ή yap τταΧαι ημών φύσις ούχ αΰτη ην ηττβρ νύν, 
 αλλ* ά\\οία, ττρωτον μβν yap τρία ην τα yevη τα των 
 άνθρώττων, ούχ ωσιτβρ νύν δυο, άρρεν καϊ θή\υ, άλλα καϊ 
 
 Ε τρίτον ττροσήν κοινον ον αμφοτέρων τούτων, ου νύν όνομα 
 \olttOv, αύτο δε ήφάνισται,' άvSpόyυvov yap εν τότε μεν ην 
 καϊ εΙΒος καϊ όνομα εξ αμφοτέρων κοινον τού τε άρρενος 
 καϊ θηΧεος, νύν δ* ουκ εστίν αλλ* η εν ονείΒεί όνομα κεί- 
 μενον. εττείτα 6\ον ην εκάστου τού άνθρώττου το εΐΒος 
 στpoyyύ\ov, νωτον καϊ ττΧευράς κύκΧω εχ^ον. γείρας Be 
 τέτταρας είχε, καϊ σκεΧη τα ϊσα ταΐς 'χερσί, καϊ ττρόσωττα 
 190 Βύο ετΓ αύ'χενί κυκΧοτερεΐ, όμοια ττάνττ)' κεφαΧην δ' ε'ττ' 
 αμφότερους τοις ττροσώττοις εναντίοις κειμενοις μίαν, καϊ 
 ωτα τετταρα, καϊ αΙΒοΐα Βύο, καϊ ταΧΧα ττάντα ώς άττό 
 τούτων άν τις εΐκάσειεν. εττορεύετο δε καϊ ορθόν ώσττερ 
 νύν, ότΓΟτερωσε βουΧηθείη• καϊ οττοτε ταγυ όρμησειε θεΐν, 
 ώσττερ οι κυβιστώντες εις όρθον τα σκεΧη περιφερόμενοι 
 κυβιστωσι κύκΧω, οκτώ τότε ουσι τοις μέΧεσιν άττερειΒόμενοι 
 ταγυ εφέροντο κύκΧω. ην δε Βιά ταύτα τρία τα yεvη καϊ 
 
 Β τοιαύτα, οτι το μεν άρρεν ην τού ήΧίου την άρχ^ην ^yovov, 
 το δε θήΧυ της yής, το δε αμφοτέρων μετε'χρν της σεΧήνης, 
 ΟΤΙ καϊ ή σεΧηνη αμφοτέρων μετεγει. ττεριφερή δε δ^ ην 
 καϊ αυτά καϊ ή πορεία αυτών Βιά το τοις yovεύσιv όμοια 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 399 
 
 Translation of the Myth told by Aristophanes 
 
 Men, methinks, have altogether failed of apprehending the 
 power of Love; for had they apprehended it, for him would 
 they have builded the greatest temples and the greatest 
 altars, and unto him would bring the greatest burnt offerings ; 
 whereas now no such honours are paid unto him — honours 
 meet for him above all other gods ; for he is that one of them 
 all who loveth men most ; he is the helper of mankind, and 
 our physician where healing bringeth the greatest happiness. 
 I will therefore endeavour to instruct you in his power ; and 
 you shall teach others. 
 
 First must be told what Human Nature is, and what are 
 the affections thereof. 
 
 Human Nature was not originally what it now is, but 
 different; for, in the first place, there were three genders of 
 mankind, — not as now, two — male and female, but a third in 
 addition thereto — a common gender composite of the two. 
 This gender itself is clean gone, and only the name thereof 
 remaineth, Man-Woman, as a name of reproach. Secondly, 
 the whole form of every human creature was round, whereof 
 the back and sides made one circumference ; and it had four 
 hands, and likewise four legs; and two faces, altogether 
 similar to each other, upon a round neck ; and on the top 
 of these faces, which were set opposite to each other, one 
 head ; and four ears ; and there were two privy members ; 
 and all the other parts after the same manner; and these 
 people walked upright, as men do now, whithersoever they 
 would ; and also, when they desired to go quickly, they 
 rolled quickly round, pushing off with their eight limbs, 
 like tumblers who tumble over and over with their legs going 
 round in the air. 
 
 Now the genders were three, and of this sort, because the 
 male gender was in the beginning sprung from the Sun, and 
 the female gender from the Earth, and that which partook of 
 both from the Moon — for the Moon partake th of both Sun 
 and Earth : so it came t^ pass that they themselves and their 
 manner of progression were circular after the likeness of 
 
400 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 elvai. ην ουν την Ισ'χυν Beiva καϊ την ρώμην, καϊ τα 
 φρονήματα με^άΧα €ij(pv, έττβ'χ^είρησαν Be τοις θεοΐς, καϊ ο 
 Xiyec 'Όμηρος irepl ^Έ^φιάλτου Τ6 καϊ "Ωτοι;, ττβρϊ εκείνων 
 C \ey€Tal•, το εΙς τον ονρανον άνάβασιν ίττί'χείρεΐν ττοίβΐν, ως 
 έτηθησομενων τοΙς θεοΐς. 
 
 Ό ουν Τιευς καϊ οΐ aWot θεοί εβονλενοντο, 6 τι 'χρη 
 
 > / 
 
 αυτούς ττοοησαι, και ηττορουν ούτε yap οττως αττοκτειναιεν 
 εΐ'χρν καϊ ώσττερ τους Υι^αντας κεραυνώσαντες το ^ενος 
 άφανίσαιεν — αΐ τιμαΧ yap αύτοΐς καϊ Ιερα τα τταρα των 
 άνθρώττων ηφανίζετο — ούθ^ οττως εωεν άσεΤ^αίνειν, μoyις 
 Βη 6 Ζευς εννοησας \εyει, οτι Αοκώ μοι, εφη, βχ^εον 
 μη'χανην, ως αν εϊεν τε άνθρωποι καϊ τταύσαιντο της 
 
 D άκοΧασίας ασθενέστεροι yεv6μεvoι. νυν μεν yap αυτούς, 
 εφη, Βιατεμώ Βίχα εκαστον, καϊ αμα μεν ασθενέστεροι 
 έσονται, αμα Βε γ^ρησιμώτεροι ήμΐν Βια το ττλείους τον 
 αριθμόν yεy ονεναί' καϊ βαΒιουνται ορθοϊ εττϊ Βυοΐν σκεΧοΐν. 
 εαν δ' ετι Βοκωσιν ασέΚηαίνειν καϊ μη εθεΧωσιν ησυγίαν 
 άyειv, ττάΧιν αΰ, εφη, τεμώ Βίγα, ωστ εφ* ενός ττορεύσονται 
 σκεΧους άσκωΧίζοντες. Ύαΰτα είττων έτεμνε τους άνθρώττους 
 
 Ε Βίχ^α, ωσττερ οι τα 6α τέμνοντες καϊ μέΧΧοντες ταριγεύειν, 
 ή ωσττερ οι τα ώα ταΐς θριξίν. οντινα Βε τεμοι, τον 
 ΆττόΧΧω εκεΧευε τ6 τε ττρόσωττον μεταστρεφειν καϊ το τον 
 αυγενος ήμισυ ττρος την τομην, ΐνα θεώμενος την αυτοΰ 
 r/A?}atv κοσμιώτερος εϊη 6 άνθρωττος, καϊ ταΧΧα ιάσθαι 
 εκεΧευεν. 6 Βε το τε ιτρόσωττον μετέστρεφε, καϊ συνέΧκων 
 τταντα'χόθεν το Βερμα εττϊ την yaστεpa νυν καΧουμενην, 
 ωσττερ τα σύστταστα βαΧάντια, εν στόμα ττοιών άττεΒει 
 κατά μεσην την yaστεpa, ο Βη τον ομφαΧον καΧοΰσι. καϊ 
 191 τας μεν άΧΧας ρυτίΒας τας ττοΧΧας εξεΧεαινε καϊ τα στήθη 
 Βιηρθρου, ε'χων τι τοιούτον opyavov, οίον οΐ σκυτοτόμοι, 
 ττερϊ τον καΧόττοΒα Χεαίνοντες τας των σ κυτών ρυτίΒας' 
 6Xίyaς Βε κατέΧιττε, τας ττερϊ αυτήν την yaστεpa καϊ τον 
 ομφαΧόν, μνημεΐον είναι του τταΧαιοΰ ττάθους. εττειΒη ουν 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 401 
 
 their parents : and they were terrible by reason of their 
 strength and valour ; and their hearts were proud, and they 
 made assault upon the Gods ; for that which Homer telleth 
 concerning-Ephialtes and Otus is told concerning them — that 
 they essayed to go up into Heaven for to lay hands on the 
 Gods. 
 
 Wherefore Zeus and the other Gods took counsel what 
 they should do, and were in doubt ; for they were not 
 minded to slay them, as they slew the giants, with thunder- 
 bolts, and to make men to cease utterly from the Earth, for 
 then would the worship and the sacrifices which men render 
 unto the Gods also cease ; nor were they minded to let them 
 go on in their iniquities. At last after a long while Zeus 
 bethought him of this that followeth, and said : " I have 
 found out a way, methinks, of keeping men alive, and yet 
 making them weaker, so that they shall cease from their 
 wickedness : I will cut each one of them in twain ; and so 
 shall they be made weaker, and also more serviceable for us, 
 having been increased in number; and they shall walk 
 upright on two legs ; and if I see them again behaving 
 themselves frowardly and not willing to live peaceably, I 
 will cut them yet again in twain," he said, " so that they shall 
 go hopping on one leg." 
 
 Having spoken thus, he straightway began to cut men in 
 twain, as one cutteth apples for pickling, or eggs with hairs ; 
 and each one whom he cut in twain he delivered unto Apollo, 
 and commanded him to turn round the face and half of the 
 neck towards the cut, so that the fellow, beholding it, might 
 behave himself more seemly ; likewise the other parts did he 
 command Apollo to dress : and Apollo turned the face round, 
 and pulled the skin together from all parts over that which 
 is now called the belly, even as one draweth together a purse, 
 and the one opening which was left he closed and made fast 
 in the middle of the belly — this is that which they now call 
 the navel ; and smoothing out all the other wrinkles every- 
 where, he fashioned the breasts with an instrument like unto• 
 that wherewith cobblers smooth out the wrinkles of the 
 leather round the last ; but he left a few wrinkles about the 
 belly itself and the navel,eto be for a memorial of that which 
 had been done of old. 
 
 2d 
 
402 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 η φύσις Βίχα έτμηθη, ττοΘουν βκαστον το ήμισυ το αυτού 
 ξυνηβί, καΧ ΤΓβριβάΧλοντες τας 'χβ.ϊρας και συμττΧβκόμβνοι 
 άΧΚηΚοις^ ΙτΓΐΘυ μουντές συμφϋναι, άττβθνησκον ύττο του 
 
 Β Χιμοΰ και της αΧλης άρτιας Βια το μηΒβν eOeXeiv χωρίς 
 άλΧηΧων Ίτοιβίν. καΐ οττότε τι άττοθάνοι των ημίσεων, το 
 Be Χειφθβίη, το Χειφθεν αΧλο ίζητβι καΐ συνεττΧεκετο, εϊτε 
 γυναικός της οΧης εντύχοι ημίσει, ο Βη νυν ηυναΐκα καΧου- 
 μεν, εϊτ άνΒρός' κα\ ούτως άττώΧΧυντο, εΧεησας Be 6 
 Ζευς άΧΧην μηχανην ττορίζεται, και μετατίθησιν αυτών τα 
 αΙΒοΐα εις το ττρόσθεν τέως yap καΐ ταύτα έκτος είχον, 
 
 C καΐ εηεννων και ετικτον ουκ εις άΧΧηΧους, αλλ' εις <γήν, 
 ωσττερ οι τεττι^ες. μετέθηκε τε ούν ούτως αυτών εις το 
 ττρόσθεν και Βια τούτων την ηενεσιν εν άΧΧηΧοις εττοίησε, 
 Βια τού άρρενος εν τω θηΧει, τώνΒε ένεκα, ϊνα εν ττ) 
 συμττΧοκη άμα μεν εΐ άνηρ 'γυναικί εντύχοι, ^εννωεν καΐ 
 yiyvoiTO το ^ενος, άμα δ* εΐ καΐ άρρεν άρρεν ι, ττΧησμονη 
 ηούν y'lyvoiTO της συνουσίας καΐ Βιατταύοιντο καΐ εττΐ τα 
 'ipya τρετΓοιντο καΐ τού άΧΧου βίου εττιμεΧοΐντο. "Εστί δ^ 
 
 D ούν εκ τόσου ό έρως έμφυτος άΧΧηΧων τοις άνθρώττοις και 
 της αρχαίας φύσεως συνα^ω^εύς και εττιχειρών ττοιησαι εν 
 εκ Βυοΐν και ιάσασθαι την φύσιν την άνθρωττίνην. 
 
 "Έίκαστος ούν ημών εστίν άνθρωττου ξύμβοΧον, άτε 
 τετμημενος ωσττερ αί '>^ητται, εξ ενός Βύο. ζητεί Βη άει 
 το αυτού έκαστος ξύμβοΧον. όσοι μεν ούν τών άνΒρών 
 τού κοινού τμήμα εισιν, ο Βη τότε άνΒρό^υνον εκαΧεΐτο, 
 φιΧο^ύναικες τ είσι καΐ οι ττοΧΧοΙ τών μοιχών εκ τούτου τού 
 
 Ε γένους ηεηόνασι, και οσαι αύ γυναίκες φίΧανΒροί τε και 
 μοιχεύτριαι, εκ τούτου τού γένους yiyvovTai. οσαι Βε τών 
 yυvaικώv yυvaικoς τμήμα εισιν, ου ττάνυ αύται τοις άνΒράσι 
 τον νουν ττροσεχουσιν, άΧΧά μάΧΧον ττρος τάς yυvaΐκaς 
 τετραμμεναι είσί, και αι εταιρίστριαι εκ τούτου τού yεvoυς 
 yiyvovTai. όσοι Βε άρρενος τμήμα εισι, τα άρρενα Βιώκουσι, 
 καΐ τέως μεν αν τταΐΒες ώσιν, άτε τεμάχια οντά τού 
 άρρενος, φιΧούσι τους άνΒρας καΐ χαίρουσι συy κατ α κείμενο ι 
 192 καϊ συμττετΓXεyμεvoι τοις άνΒράσι, και εισιν ούτοι βέΧτιστοι 
 τών τταίΒων καϊ μειρακίων, άτε άνΒρειότατοι οντες φύσει, 
 φασί Βε Βη τίνες αυτούς αναίσχυντους είναι, ψευΒόμενοί' 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 403 
 
 Now when the original creature was cut in twain, the one 
 half, longing for the other half, went to meet it, and they 
 cast their arms around one another, and clung unto one another, 
 eagerly desiring to be made one creature ; and they began to 
 die for lack of food and of all other things that a man must 
 provide for himself; for neither would eat aught save together 
 with the other : and when one of the halves died, and the 
 other was left, that which was left went about seeking for 
 another half, and when it happened upon the half of that 
 which aforetime was a woman — this half we now call woman 
 — or upon the half of that which was a man, joined itself 
 unto it : and thus did they perish. Then Zeus had compas- 
 sion upon them, and brought forth a new device : — He brought 
 their privy parts round to the front — for before that time 
 their privy parts were set in the outerpart of their bodies, 
 and they had not intercourse one with another, but with the 
 earth, as grasshoppers. So he changed them and caused them 
 to have intercourse one with another, to the end that, if a 
 man happened upon a woman, there might be propagation, 
 and if male happened upon male, there might be satisfaction, 
 and then an end made of it, both turning to other things and 
 minding them. Of such oldness is the love of one another 
 implanted in us, which bringeth us again into the primitive 
 state, and endeavoureth of two to make one and to heal the 
 division of Human Nature. Every human creature, then, is 
 a counterpart, being a half cut flat like unto a flounder, and 
 alway seeketh his own counterpart. 
 
 They who are the halves of that composite nature which 
 was then called Man-Woman are the kind whereof the most 
 part of adulterers are ; and of this sort likewise are women 
 which lust for men and are adulteresses. But those women 
 who are halves of the whole which was Woman take little 
 heed of men, but rather turn them to companionship with 
 women ; and those males which are halves of the whole 
 which was male, go after the male : while they are boys, 
 inasmuch as they are slices of the male, they love men and 
 take pleasure in companionship with men ; these be of all 
 boys and youths the best, inasmuch as they are by nature the 
 most manly : some, indeed, say that they are without shame ; 
 but herein they speak falsely; for it is not by reason of 
 
404 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ου yap vir άναισγυντία^; τούτο Βρώσι,ν, αλλ' ύττο θάρρου^ζ 
 καΧ άνΒρβίας καΐ άρρβνωττίας, το ομοίον αύτοΐ^; άσιταζόμβνοι, 
 /ιεγα he τβκμήρίον καϊ yap τεΧεωθβντες μόνοι άιτοβαίνουσιν 
 eU τα τΓοΧιτικα άνΒρβς οΐ τοιοΰτοί. Ιττβώαν δε άνΒρωθώσι, 
 
 Β τΓαώβραστονσί καϊ ττροζ ^άμου^ καϊ τταίΒοττοίίας ου ττροσ- 
 βγουσι τον νουν φύσβί, αλλά ύττο του νομού αναγκάζονται* 
 αλλ* βξαρκβΐ αύτοΐ<ζ μ€τ άΧλήΧων καταζην ά^άμοι^. πτάν- 
 Tft)9 μ€ν ουν 6 τοιούτος ΊταιΒβραστής Τ6 καϊ φιλβραστης 
 yijveTai, ael το ξυyyeve<ζ άστταζόμενος. όταν μβν ουν καϊ 
 αύτω βκβίνω βντύ'χτ) τω αυτού ήμίσβι καϊ 6 τταιΒβραστης καϊ 
 
 C αλλθ9 Ίτάς, τ6τ€ καϊ θαυμαστά βκττλήττονται φιλία re καϊ 
 οίκ€ΐ6τητι καϊ βρωτι, ουκ βθβλοντβς, ώς βττος elweiv, γωρίζβ- 
 σθαι άΧΚηΚων ούΒβ σμικρόν 'χρόνον. καϊ οι ΒιατεΧούντβς 
 μ€Τ αλληΧων Βια βίου ουτοί βίσιν, οι ούΒ* αν βγοιεν elirelv, 
 6 τι βούλονται σφίσι τταρ αΧΚήΧων yίyveσθaι, ούΒβ yap 
 αν Βόξβιβ τούτ elvai ή των άφροΒισίων συνουσία, ώ? άρα 
 τούτου βνεκα βτβρος ίτέρω 'χαίρει ξυνων οΰτως έττϊ μeyά\η<ί 
 
 D σίΓουΒης* αλλ' ahXo τι βουΧομενη ίκατβρου ή ψυχή Βή\ΐ} 
 εστίν, ο ου Βύναται eliretv, αλλά μαντβύβται ο βούΧβται 
 καϊ αΐνίττβται. καϊ el αύτοΐς iv τω αύτω κατακειμίνοις 
 €ΊΓΐστας 6 "Έίφαιστος, έχων τα opyava, epoiTo• " Tt €σθ' ο 
 βούΧεσθε, ω ανθρωττοι, ύμΐν τταρ άΧΧηΧων yeveσθaι ; " καϊ 
 el άτΓορούντας αυτούς ττάΧιν epoiTO' "''Αρά ye τούΒε 
 €πιθυμεΐτ€, ev τω αύτω yeveσθaι ο τι μάΧιστ άΧΧηΧοις, 
 ώστε καϊ νύκτα καϊ ήμέραν μη άττοΧείττεσθαι άΧΧηΧων ; el 
 
 Ε yap τούτου εττιθυμεΐτε, έθέΧω υμάς συντήξαι καϊ συμφύσαι 
 εΙς το αυτό, ώστε Βύ^ οντάς eva yeyovevai καϊ €ως τ αν 
 ζήτ€, ως eva οντά, KOivfj αμφότερους ζην, καϊ εττειΒαν 
 άτΓοθάνητε, εκεί αύ εν " ΚιΒου άντϊ Βυεΐν eva είναι κοινή 
 τεθνεωτε* αλλ' οράτε, εΐ τούτου εράτε καϊ εξαρκεΐ ύμΐν, 
 αν τούτου τύχητε•^^ ταύτα άκουσας ϊσμεν οτι ούΒ' αν εις 
 εξαρνηθείη ούΒ* άλλο τι αν φανείη βουΧομενος, αλλ' άτεχνώς 
 οϊοιτ αν άκηκοεναι τούτο, ο ττάΧαι άρα εττεθύμει, συν€Χθων 
 καϊ συντακεϊς τω ερωμενω εκ Βυεΐν εΙς yεvεσθaι. τούτο 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 405 
 
 shamelessness that they do this, but by reason of the courage 
 and manliness in them, which their countenance declareth. 
 Wherefore do they greet joyfully that which is like unto 
 themselves : and that this I say concerning them is true, what 
 foUoweth after showeth ; for afterward when these are grown 
 up, they alone of all men advance to the conduct of politiques. 
 Now when these are grown up to be men, they make youths 
 their companions, and their nature inclineth them not to 
 wedlock and the begetting of children ; only the law con- 
 straineth them thereto : for they are content to pass their 
 lives with one another unwedded, being lovers one of another, 
 and always greeting that nature which hath kinship with 
 their own. When, therefore, one of these happeneth upon 
 the very one who is his own other half, then are the two con- 
 founded with a mighty great amazement of friendship and kin- 
 ship and love, and will not — nay, not for a moment — be parted 
 from each other. These be they who all their life through are 
 alway together, nor yet could tell what it is they wish to 
 obtain of each other — for surely it is not satisfaction of 
 sensual appetite that all this great endeavour is after : nay, 
 plainly, it is something other that the Soul of each wisheth — 
 something which she cannot tell, but, darkly divining, maketh 
 her end. And if Hephaestus came and stood by the two 
 with his tools in his hand, and asked of them saying, " What 
 is it, men, that ye wish to obtain of each other ? " and when 
 they could not answer, asked of them again saying, " Is it this 
 that ye desire — to be so united unto each other that neither 
 by night nor by day shall ye be parted from each other ? If 
 it is this that ye desire, I will melt and fuse you together so 
 that, although ye are two, ye shall become one, and, as long 
 as ye live, shall both live one common life, and when ye die, 
 shall be one dead man yonder in Hades, instead of two dead 
 men: see now, if it be for this ye are lovers, and if the 
 getting of this is all your desire." We know well that 
 there is none who would say nay unto this, or show a wish 
 for aught else; yea, rather, each one would think that this 
 which was now promised was the very thing which he 
 had alway, albeit unwittingly, desired — to be joined 
 unto the beloved, and• to be melted together with him, 
 so that the twain should become one: the cause whereof 
 
406 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 <yap εστί το αίτιον, οτι ή άρ'χαία φνσι<; ημών ην αντη καί 
 ^μ€ν 6\θί' τον 6\ου ονν ττ} έττιθυμία καΐ Βιώξβι, €ρω<; 
 193 όνομα, καϊ irpo του, ώσττερ λέγω, ei^ ημβν νυνί Be Βία 
 την άΒίκίαν Βιωκίσθημβν υττο τον θβοΰ, καθάιτβρ ^ΑρκάΒβς 
 ντΓο ΚακβΒαιμονίων. φόβος ονν βστιν, iav μη κόσμιοι ώμεν 
 ττρος τους θβονς, οττως μη καϊ αύθις Βιασγ^ισθησόμεθα, καϊ 
 ΤΓβρίϊμβν €χοζ/τ69 ώσττβρ οι iv ταΐς στηΚαις κατοι Ύραφην 
 €κτ€τν7Γωμ€νοι Βιαττβττρισμβνοι κατά τας ρίνας, ^^ε^^ονοτες 
 ωστΓβρ Χίστται. αΧΚα τούτων βνβκα ττάντ ανΒρα 'χρη 
 
 Β ατταντα τταρακβΚεύβσθαι εύσββεΐν irepl θεούς, ϊνα τα μεν 
 εκφύ^ωμεν, των Βε τύ'χωμεν, ών ο "Ε/οω? ήμΐν ήρεμων καϊ 
 στρατη'γός. ω μηΒεΙς εναντία ττραττετω' ττράττει Β ενάντια 
 όστις θεοΐς άττε'χθάνεται. φίΧοι yap γενόμενοι καϊ ΒιαΧλα- 
 ^γεντες τω θεω εξευρησομεν τε καϊ εντευξόμεθα τοις τταιΒικοΐς 
 τοις ήμετέροις αυτών, ο τών νυν oXiyoi ττοιοΰσι. καϊ μη 
 μοι ύττοΧάβΐ) ^Έίρυξίμαγος κωμωΒών τον XOyov, ώς ΐίαυσανιαν 
 καϊ ^ Αγάθωνα λέγω* ϊσως μεν yap καϊ ούτοι τούτων 
 
 C τυγχάνουσιν οντες καί εισίν αμφότεροι την φύσιν άρρενες, 
 λέγω Βε ουν έγωγε καθ^ άττάντων καϊ άνΒρών καϊ γυναικών, 
 οτι οΰτως αν ημών το <γενος εΰΒαιμον γένοιτο, ει εκτεΧεσαι- 
 μεν τον έρωτα καϊ τών τταιΒικών τών αυτού έκαστος τύγοι 
 εις την άργαίαν άττεΧθών φύσιν, ει Βε τοΰτο άριστον, 
 avayKaiov καϊ τών νυν τταρόντων το τούτου ε^^υτάτω 
 άριστον είναι, τούτο δ' εστϊ τταιΒικών τυγείν κατά νουν 
 
 D αυτω ττεφυκότων. ου Βη τον αίτιον θεον υμνοϋντες Βικαίως 
 αν ύμνοΐμεν "Έ^ρωτα, ος εν τε τω τταροντι ημάς ττΧεΐστα 
 ονίνησιν εις το οίκεΐον ά^ων, καϊ εις το εττειτα ελττίΒας 
 με^ίστας ιταρε'χεται, ημών ιταρε'χομενων ιτρος θεούς εύσε- 
 βειαν, καταστησας ημάς εις την αρ'χαίαν φύσιν καϊ Ιασάμε- 
 νος μακάριους καϊ εύΒαίμονας ττοιήσαι. 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 407 
 
 is this, that our original nature was such that we were 
 One Whole. 
 
 Love, then, is the name of our desire and pursuit of the 
 Whole ; and once, I say, we were one, but now for our 
 wickedness God hath made us to dwell separate, even as the 
 Arcadians who were made to dwell separate by the Lacedae- 
 monians ; and even yet are we in danger, if we are not 
 obedient unto the Gods, to be again cut in twain, and made 
 to go about as mere tallies, in the figure of those images 
 which are graven in relief on tablets with their noses sawn 
 through into halves. Wherefore let our exhortation unto every 
 man be that he live in the fear of the gods, to the end that 
 we may escape this, and obtain that unto which Love our 
 Captain leadeth us. Him let no man withstand. Whoso is 
 at enmity with the gods withstandeth him ; but if we are 
 become friends of God, and are reconciled unto him, then 
 shall we find and meet each one of us his own True Love, 
 which happeneth unto few in our time. 
 
 Now I pray Eryximachus not to break a jest upon my 
 discourse, as though Pausanias and Agathon were in my mind; 
 for peradventure they too are of those I speak of, and are 
 both by nature male : but, be that as it may, I speak con- 
 cerning all men and women, and say that the state of 
 mankind would become blessed if we all fulfilled our love, 
 and each one of us happened upon his own True Love, and 
 so returned unto his original nature. 
 
 If this is best of all, it foUoweth of necessity that that 
 which in our present life cometh nearest thereto is best — this 
 is that each one of us should find the love which is naturally 
 suitable to him ; and the God we ought to praise for this 
 is Love, who both at this present time bestoweth on us the 
 greatest benefit, in that he leadeth us unto our own, and for 
 the time to come giveth us promise of that which is best, 
 if we render the observance to godward that is meet, to wit, 
 the promise that he will restore us to our original nature, and 
 heal us of our pain, and make us divinely blessed. 
 
408 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 General Observations on the Myth told by 
 Aristophanes 
 
 The Myth told by Aristophanes in the Symposium ^ dififers 
 from all other Platonic Myths in being conceived in a spirit, 
 and told in a manner, reminding one of Kabelais or Swift. It 
 explains the sentiment of love as due to the fact that βκαστος 
 ημών βστυν ανθρώττου σύμβόλον^ — every human being is a 
 tally : which came about in the following way : — Primitive 
 man was round, and had four hands and four feet, and one 
 head with two faces looking opposite ways. He could walk 
 on his legs if he liked, but he could also roll over and over 
 with great speed like a tumbler ; which he did when he 
 wanted to go fast.^ There were three genders at that time, 
 corresponding to the Sun, the parent of the masculine gender, 
 to the Earth, the parent of the feminine gender, and to the 
 Moon, the parent of the common gender. These round people, 
 children of round parents, being very swift and strong, attacked 
 Zeus and the other gods. Instead of destroying prospective 
 worshippers with thunderbolts, Zeus adopted the plan of 
 doubling the number of the round people by cutting each one 
 of them in two. This not only doubled the number of his pro- 
 spective worshippers, but humbled them, for they had now to walk 
 on two legs and could not roll ; and he threatened, if they gave 
 him any further trouble, to halve them again, and make them 
 merely bas-reliefs, and leave them to hop about on one leg.* 
 
 1 189 D if. 2 191 p, 
 
 ^ Mr A. B. Cook {Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak, in Class. Rev. July 1904, p. 326), 
 speaking of the Sicilian triskeles as a survival of the Cyclops as primitively con- 
 ceived, — i.e. conceived as (1) three-eyed, and (2) as a disc representing the solar 
 orb, — remarks that " Plato was probably thinking of the Empedoclean ον\οφυ€Ϊ$ 
 . . . τύτΓοί (251 κ) when he spoke of Janiform beings with four arms and four 
 legs which enabled them to revolve κύκλφ {Symp. 189 ε ; cf. I'ion. 44 i))." 
 
 ^ In Callaway's Zulu Nursery Tales, i. 198-202, the story is told of a woman 
 who is carried away by one-legged people. When they first saw her they said : 
 "'Oh, it would be a pretty thing — but, oh, the two legs!' They said this 
 because she had two legs and two hands ; for they are like as if an ox of the 
 white man is skinned and divided into two halves ; the Amadhlungundhlebe 
 were like one side, there not being another side." In a note ad loc. (p. 199) 
 Callaway refers to Pliny {H.N. vii. 2) for a nation of one-legged men — hominum 
 genus qui monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, mirae pernicitatis ad saltum ; 
 and to Lane's notes to the Introduction to the Arabian Nights, p. 33 — "The 
 Shikk is another demoniacal creature, having the form of half a human being, 
 like a man divided longitudinally. " 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 409 
 
 Now Love is the remembrance of the original undivided 
 state : it is the longing which one half has to be again united 
 to its other half, so that the original Whole may be restored : 
 ■every human being is a tally. 
 
 It is difficult to think of this story ^ as a Platonic Myth 
 in the ordinary sense. Does it deduce any Category, or set 
 forth any Kegulative Principle ? If it does, it is only as a 
 satirical parody of the impressive Aetiological Myth. Love 
 is a mysterious principle, Plato seems to say ; but here is a 
 Comic History of it which may help to make it less mysterious ! 
 And yet, after all, does the circumstance that one Aetiological 
 Myth is comic, and another is serious and impressive, con- 
 stitute a real difference ? We have to remember, with regard 
 to these comic or grotesque histories, that at one end of the 
 list of them there are some of the earliest attempts at Myth 
 or Story-telling made by the human race, and at the other 
 end, some of the most effective expressions of the scorn and 
 zqqX and pity of civilised man. The Life of Gargantua and 
 Pantagruel and Gulliver's Travels show us how the comic or 
 grotesque history, as well as the solemn Myth, — Myth of Er 
 or Purgatorio, — may set forth the Universal. 
 
 The place held in such a deeply religious system as the 
 Orphic by a savage grotesque like the story of Zagreus 
 enables us to understand how Plato — if only in a spirit of 
 parody — could insert a story like that of the round people in 
 a serious discussion of the nature of Love. 
 
 Zagreus ^ was the son of Zeus and Persephone, and his 
 father's darling. But Hera was jealous, and incited the 
 Titans to slay the child. They surprised him among his toys, 
 
 ^ Perhaps suggested by the ττολλά p.h άμφητρόσωττα καΐ άμφίστβρρ' έφύοντο 
 Bovyevrj άνδρόττρωρα of Empedocles. Professor Burnet's illuminating account 
 of the theory of "organic combinations" advanced by Empedocles is full of 
 suggestion for the reader of the Myth told by Aristophanes in the Symposium : 
 see especially section 94 of ^arly Greek Philosophy. 
 
 '^ For the story of Zagreus and its place in religious doctrine and practice, 
 see Lobeck, Aglaoph. pp. 547 fif., Gardner's New Chapters in Cheek History, 
 p. 396, and Jevons' Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 355. Dr. Jevons 
 sums up as follows : The Zagreus Myth, before Pythagoreanism affected the 
 Orphic cult, had driven out all others, and was accepted as the orthodox 
 explanation of the new worship, by which it was reconciled with the old 
 customary religion. Pythagoreanism afterwards allegorised this Myth in the 
 interest not of religion, but of a philosophical system. See also Olympiodorus 
 ad Plat. Phaedonem, 70 c. Grog's Hist, of Greece, part i. ch. i. (vol. i. p. 17, 
 n. 1, ed. 1862), and Miss Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 
 Introduction, p. xi. 
 
410 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 while he was wondering at the image of his own face in a 
 mirror, and tore him to pieces and ate him, all save his heart, 
 which Athena brought to Zeus, who gave it to Semele, and 
 from her Zagreus was born again as Dionysus. The Titans 
 Zeus in anger consumed with his lightning, and out of their 
 ashes arose Man, whose nature thus unites in its composition 
 an evil element — the flesh of the Titans, — and a good element 
 — the flesh of Zagreus which they had eaten. 
 
 Much was made of this Myth by Orphic and Neo- 
 Platonic interpreters. The dismemberment (Βίαμέλι,σμό^;) of 
 Zagreus was symbolic of the resolution of the One unto the 
 Many ; his birth again as Dionysus, of the return from the 
 Many to the One ; while the moral of all was that by cere- 
 monial rites and ecstasy we may overcome the Titanic element 
 in us.^ 
 
 That Zagreus, the Horned Child, κβρόβν βρέφος, as he is 
 called, represented the bull which was torn to pieces and eaten 
 in a savage rite, and that the Greek story which I have 
 sketched was an Aetiological Myth to explain the rite, it 
 is impossible to doubt. Out of this savage material were 
 evolved the highly philosophical and moral results which I 
 have indicated. This parallel I have brought in the hope 
 of making Plato's introduction of the Bound People into 
 his Philosophy of Love more intelligible. 
 
 I said that the story of the Eound People, told by 
 Aristophanes, stands alone among the Platonic Myths in being 
 conceived in a spirit and related in a manner which remind 
 one of Kabelais or Swift. Let me cap it from Eabelais 
 (iv. 57-61):— 
 
 Pantagruel - went ashore in an island, which, for situation and 
 governor, may be said not to have its fellow. When you just 
 come into it, you find it rugged, craggy, and barren, unpleasant 
 to the eye, painful to the feet, and almost as inaccessible as the 
 mountain of Dauphine, Avhich is somewhat like a toad-stool, and was 
 never climbed, as any can remember, by any but Doyac, who had 
 charge of King Charles the Eighth's train of artillery. This same 
 Doyac, with strange tools and engines, gained the mountain's top, 
 and there he found an old ram. It puzzled many a wise head to 
 guess how it got thither. Some said that some eagle, or great 
 
 1 See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 117 fF. ; Lobeck, Aglaoph. 710 if. 
 
 2 I avail myself of the version of Urquhart and Motteux. 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 411 
 
 horn-coot, having carried it thither while it was yet a lambkin, 
 it had got away, and saved itself among the bushes. 
 
 As for us, having with much toil and sweat overcome the 
 difficult ways at the entrance, we found the top of the mountain 
 so fertile, healthful, and pleasant, that I thought I was then in 
 the true Garden of Eden, or earthly paradise, about whose 
 situation our good theologues are in such a quandary, and keep 
 such a pother. 
 
 As for Pantagruel, he said that here was the seat of Areto — 
 that is as much as to say. Virtue — described by Hesiod. This, 
 however, with submission to better judgments. The ruler of this 
 place was one Master Gaster, the first master of arts in the world. 
 For, if you believe that fire is the great master of arts, as Tully 
 writes, you very much wrong him and yourself : alas, Tully never 
 believed this. On the other side, if you fancy Mercury to be the 
 first inventor of arts, as our ancient Druids believed of old, you 
 are mightily beside the mark. The satirist's ^ sentence that affirms 
 Master Gaster to be the master of all arts is true. With him 
 peacefully resided old Goody Penia, alias Poverty, the mother of 
 the ninety-nine Muses, on whom Porus, the lord of Plenty, 
 formerly begot Love, that noble child, the mediator of heaven 
 and earth, as Plato affirms in Symposio. We were all obliged to 
 pay our homage, and swear allegiance to that mighty sovereign ; 
 for he is imperious, severe, blunt, hard, uneasy, inflexible ; you 
 cannot make him believe, represent to him, or persuade him 
 anything. He does not hear. ... He only speaks by signs. . . . 
 What company soever he is in, none dispute with him for pre- 
 cedence or superiority. ... He held the first place at the Coun- 
 cil of Basle ; though some will tell you that the Council was 
 tumultuous, by the contention and ambition of many for priority. 
 Every one is busied, and labours to serve him; and, indeed, to 
 make amends for this, he does this good to mankind, as to invent 
 for them all arts, machines, trades, engines, and crafts ; he even 
 instructs brutes in arts which are against their nature, making 
 poets of ravens, jackdaws, chattering jays, parrots, and starlings, 
 and poetesses of magpies, teaching them to utter human language, 
 speak, and sing. ... At the court of that great master of 
 ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two sorts of troublesome and too 
 officious apparitors, whom he very much detested. The first were 
 called Engastrimythes ; the others Gastrolaters. . . . The first 
 were soothsayers, enchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and 
 seemed not to speak and give answers from the mouth, but from 
 the belly. ... In the holy decrees, 26, qu. 3, they are styled 
 
 ^ Persius, Prologus — 
 
 Magister artis, ingenique largitor 
 Venter. 
 
412 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Ventriloqui; and the same name is given them in Ionian by 
 Hippocrates, in his fifth book of Epid., as men who spoke from 
 the belly. Sophocles calls them Sternomantes. ... As for the 
 Gastrolaters, they stuck close to one another in knots and gangs. 
 Some of them merry, wanton . . . others louring, grim, dogged, 
 demure, and crabbed ; all idle, mortal foes to business, spending 
 half their time in sleeping, and the rest in doing nothing, a rent- 
 charge and dead unnecessary weight on the earth, as Hesiod saith ; 
 afraid, as we judged, of offending or lessening their paunch. . . . 
 Coming near the Gastrolaters, I saw they were followed by a 
 great number of fat waiters and tenders, laden with baskets, 
 dossers, hampers, dishes, wallets, pots, and kettles. . . . 
 
 Those gastrolatrous hobgoblins being withdrawn, Pantagruel 
 carefully minded the famous master of arts, Gaster. . . . From 
 the beginning he invented the smith's art, and husbandry to 
 manure the ground, that it might yield him corn ; he invented 
 arms, and the art of war, to defend corn ; physic and astronomy, 
 with other parts of mathematics, which might be useful to keep 
 corn a great number of years in safety from the injuries of the 
 air, beasts, robbers, and purloiners ; he invented water, wind, and 
 hand-mills, and a thousand other engines to grind corn, and to 
 turn it into meal ; leaven to make the dough ferment, and the use 
 of salt to give it a savour, for he knew that nothing bred more 
 diseases than heavy, unleavened, unsavoury bread. He found 
 a way to get fire to bake it; hour-glasses, dials, and clocks to 
 mark the time of its baking ; and as some countries wanted corn, 
 he contrived means to convey it out of one country into another. 
 ... He invented mules. ... He invented carts and waggons. 
 . . . He devised boats, gallies, and ships. . . . Besides, seeing 
 that, when he tilled the ground, some years the corn perished in 
 it for want of rain in due season, in others rotted, or was drowned 
 by its excess, ... he found out a way to conjure the rain down 
 from heaven only with cutting a certain grass. ... I took it to 
 be the same as the plant, one of whose boughs being dipped by 
 Jove's priest in the Agrian fountain, on the Lycian mountain in 
 Arcadia, in time of drought, raised vapours which gathered into 
 clouds, and then dissolved into rain, that kindly moistened the 
 whole country. Our master of arts was also said to have found 
 a way to keep the rain up in the air, and make it fall into the 
 sea. . . . And as in the fields, thieves and plunderers sometimes 
 stole, and took by force the corn and bread which others had 
 toiled to get, he invented the art of building towns, forts, and 
 castles, to hoard and secure that staff of life. On the other hand, 
 finding none in the fields, and hearing that it was hoarded up and 
 secured in towns, forts, and castles, and watched with more care 
 than ever were the golden pippins of the Hesperides, he turned 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 413 
 
 engineer, and found ways to beat, storm, and demolish forts and 
 castles, with machines and warlike thunderbolts, battering-rams, 
 ballistas, and catapults, whose shapes were shown us, not over- 
 well understood by our engineers, architects, and other disciples 
 of Vitruvius. 
 
414 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Symposium 202 D— 2 12a 
 
 202 D Tt ovv civ, βφην, βϊη 6 "Έρως; θνητός; "Υίκιστά ye. 
 
 Ε *Αλλά τί μην ; "Ήσττε/? τα ττροτβρα, βψη, μβταξύ θνητού 
 και αθανάτου. Ύί ουν, ω Διοτίμα ; ΑαΙμων /^εγα?, ώ 
 ^ώκρατβς' καΐ yap ττάν το Βαίμόνίον μεταξύ βστο θεοΰ τβ 
 και θνητού. Τίνα, ην δ' iyώ, Βύναμιν έχον ; 'Έρμηνβΰον 
 καΐ ΒίατΓορθμβυον θεοΐς τα τταρ^ άνθρώττων καϊ άνθρώττοις 
 τα τταρα θβων, των μεν τας Βεήσεις καϊ θυσίας, των τε 
 τας ετητάξεις τε καϊ άμοίβας των θυσιών. εν μέσω δε δζ^ 
 αμφοτέρων συμττληροΐ, ώστε το ττάν αύτο αύτω ξυνΒεΒεσθαί. 
 Bca τούτου καϊ ή μαντική ττασα χωρεί καϊ ή των Ιερέων 
 τέχνη των τε ττερί τας θυσίας καϊ τας τεΧετας καϊ τας 
 203 εττωΒας καϊ την μαντείαν ττασαν καϊ yoητείav. θεός Βε 
 άνθρώττω ου μίyvυτaL, αλλά Βία τούτου ττάσά εστίν ή 
 όμίΧία καϊ ή Βίολεκτος θεοΐς ττρος άνθρώττους, καϊ 
 εyρηyop6σί καϊ καθεύΒουσι. καϊ 6 μεν ττερϊ τα τοιαύτα 
 σοφός Βαίμονίος άνήρ, 6 Βε αλ\ο το σοφός ων η ττερϊ 
 τεχνας η χeίpoυpyίaς τινας βάναυσος. ουτοο Βη οΐ Βαίμονες 
 ΤΓοΧΚοϊ καϊ τταντοΒαττοί είσιν, εΙς Βε τούτων εστϊ καϊ 6 
 "Έρως. ΐΐατρος Βε, ην Β εγώ, τίνος εστϊ καϊ μητρός ; 
 
 Β Μακρότερον μεν, εφη, BLηyησaσθaL. όμως Βε σοι ερώ. οτε 
 yap εyέvετo η ^ΑφροΒίτη, είστυώντο οί θεοί, οί τε αλΧοί 
 καϊ 6 της ΜητίΒος υΙος ΐΐόρος. εττειΒη Βε εΒείττνησαν, 
 ττροσαι,τησουσα, οίον Βη ευωχίας οΰσης, άφίκετο η ΐίενία 
 καϊ ην ττερϊ τας θύρας. 6 ουν ΤΙόρος μεθυσθεϊς του 
 νεκταρος, οίνος yap οΰττω ην, εις τον του Αώς κηττον 
 είσέΚθων βεβαρημένος ηυΒεν. η ουν ΤΙενία, εττιβουΧεύουσα 
 Βίά την αυτής άττορίαν τταιΒίον ττοιήσασθαι εκ του ΐΐόρου, 
 
 C κατακΧίνεταί τε τταρ* αύτω καϊ εκύησε τον "Έίρωτα. Βώ 
 Βη καϊ της ΑφροΒίτης άκοΧουθος καϊ θεράττων yέyovεv 6 
 "Έ»ρως, yεvvηθεϊς εν τοΐς εκείνης yεvεθXίoLς καϊ άμα φύσει 
 εραστής ών ττερϊ το καΧον, καϊ της ^ ΑφροΒίτης καΧής 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 415 
 
 Translation of the Discourse of Diotima 
 
 What then is Eros ? — is he Mortal ? Nay, Mortal he 
 verily is not. What then is he ? Betwixt Mortal and 
 Immortal, she answered. What sayest thou, Diotima ? He 
 is a great Daemon, Socrates : for the whole tribe of Daemons 
 is betwixt God and Mortal. And what is their office ? said 
 I. They are Interpreters, and carry up to the Gods the 
 things which come from men, and unto men the things which 
 come from the Gods — our prayers and burnt-offerings, and 
 their commands and the recompenses of our burnt-offerings. 
 The tribe of Daemons being in the midst betwixt these twain 
 — the Godhead and Mankind — filleth up that distance, so 
 that the Universe is held together in the bond of unity. 
 Through the intermediation of these cometh all divination ; 
 the art of priests cometh also through them, and of them 
 that have to do with burnt -offerings and initiations and 
 enchantments and every sort of soothsaying and witchery. 
 The Godhead mingleth not with Mankind ; but it is through 
 the Daemons only that Gods converse with men, both when 
 we are awake and when we are asleep : and he who hath the 
 wisdom whereby he understandeth this work of the Daemons 
 is a man inspired, and he who hath any other wisdom 
 whereby he excelleth in some art or craft is a mechanic. 
 Now these Daemons are many and of all sorts : and one of 
 them is Eros. And who is his Father, I said, and who is his 
 Mother ? That is a longer story, she said, but I will tell it 
 unto thee. 
 
 On the day that Aphrodite was born, the Gods made 
 a feast, and with them sat Abundance the son of Prudence. 
 When they had eaten. Poverty, perceiving that there was 
 good cheer, came for to beg, and she stood at the door. Now 
 Abundance, having made himself drunken with nectar — for 
 there was no wine then, — entered into the Garden of Zeus, 
 and being heavy with drink, slept ; and Poverty, being minded 
 by reason of her helplessness to have a child by Abundance, 
 lay with him, and she cenceived and bore Eros. Wherefore 
 Eros became the companion and servant of Aphrodite ; for 
 
416 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 οΰσης. are ovv Tlopov καϊ Tlevia^; νίο<ί ων 6 "Ε/3ω? iv 
 τοιαντΎ) τύγτ) καθβστηκβ. ττρωτον μβν ττένης άβί ίση, καϊ 
 ττοΧλοΟ δε? άττάλός re καϊ καΧός, οίον οί ττολλοί οϊονταί, 
 
 D άλλα σκληρο<; καϊ αύγ^μηρο^; καϊ άννττοΒητο^ζ και αοίκος^ 
 γαμαί7Γ6τη<ζ άβϊ ων καϊ άστρωτο^;» βττϊ θύραις καϊ iv οΒοΐς 
 ύτταίθρίο^; κοίμώμβνος, την της μητρός φύσιν βγων αεϊ ivBeia 
 ξννοίκος. κατά δε αυ τον ττατέρα έττίβονλός ε'στί τοΐς 
 καΧοΐς καϊ τοΐς ά^αθοΐς, άνΒρβΐος ων καϊ ϊτης καϊ σύντονος, 
 θηρβντης Ββίνός, aeL τ ίνας ττΧύκων μηγανάς, καϊ φρονησεως 
 έτΓίθυμητης, καϊ ττόριμος, φιλοσόφων Βία τταντος τον βίου, 
 Ββίνος ^όης καϊ φαρμακβυς καϊ σοφιστής' καϊ οντ€ ως 
 
 Ε αθάνατος ττέφνκβν οΰτβ ως θνητός, άλλα τοτβ μβν της 
 αύτης ημέρας θάΧΚβί τε καϊ ζη, όταν βύττορηστ), τότε δε 
 άτΓοθνησκβί, waktv δε άναβιώσκβταί Βια την του ττατρος 
 φύσιν. το δε ττοριζόμβνον ael υττβκρβΐ, ώστε οΰτε άττορβΐ 
 "Ερως τΓοτε οιίτε ττΧουτβΐ. σοφίας τε αν καϊ άμαθίας iv 
 μέσω iστίv. έχε* yap ώδε* θεών ούΒεϊς φιΧοσοφβΐ ούδ' 
 €7Γίθνμ€Ϊ σοφός γενέσθαι,• βστι yap' ούδ' eX τις άΧΧος 
 204 σοφός, ον φίΧοσοφεΐ. ovS* αν οί άμαθβϊς φιΧοσοφονσιν 
 ovh i7Γίθvμovσί σοφοϊ ^βνέσθαν αυτό yap τοντό βστι 
 'χαΧβτΓον άμαθία, το μη οντά καΧόν κατ^αθόν μηΒε φρονιμον 
 Βοκ€Ϊν αντω elvai ίκανόν. ονκονν έττιθνμεΐ ο μη οΐόμβνος 
 ivBeης βϊναι ου αν μη οϊηται i^τLB€tσθaL. Τίνες οΰν, βφην 
 εγώ, ώ Αίοτίμα^ οί φιΧοσοφοϋντβς, el μήτε οί σοφοϊ μήτε 
 
 Β οί αμαθείς ; ΑήΧον Βή, εφη, τουτό ye ηΒη καϊ τταιΒί, otl 
 οί μεταξύ τούτων αμφοτέρων, ων αυ καϊ ό "Έιρως. εστί 
 yap Βη των καΧΧίστων ή σοφία, Έρως δ* iστϊv έρως ττερϊ 
 το καΧόν, ώστε avayKalov Έρωτα φυΧόσοφον είναι, 
 φίΧόσοφον δε οντά μεταξύ είναι σοφού καϊ άμαθους, αίτια 
 δε αύτω καϊ τούτων η yέvεσις' ττατρός μεν yap σοφού 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 417 
 
 he was begotten on her birthday, and is, moreover, by nature 
 a lover of Beauty and of Aphrodite the Beautiful. 
 
 Inasmuch, then, as Eros is the son of Abundance and 
 Poverty, his case standeth thus : — First, he is poor alway ; and 
 so far is he from being tender and fair, as most do opine, that 
 he is rough and squalid, and he goeth barefoot and hath no 
 house to dwell in, but lieth alway on the bare earth at doors 
 and on the highways, sleeping under the open sky; for his 
 mother's nature he hath, and he dwelleth alway in company 
 with want. But he hath also his Father's nature, and ever 
 plotteth against the fair and good; being a bold lad, and 
 ever ready with bow strung, a mighty hunter, alway weaving 
 devices, eagerly desiring knowledge, full of inventions, playing 
 the philosopher all his life, a mighty charlatan and master of 
 enchantments and subtle reasons. Inasmuch, then, as he hath 
 the nature neither of Immortal nor of Mortal, he bloometh 
 and liveth when that aboundeth unto him which his heart 
 desireth, and, anon, the very same day he dieth ; and then he 
 Cometh to life again, because of his Father's nature : that 
 which is continually supplied unto him in abundance runneth 
 away continually, so that he is neither poor nor rich. More- 
 over, he standeth in the midst betwixt Wisdom and Ignorance ; 
 for the matter standeth thus — No God is a Philosopher, to 
 wit, one who desireth to become wise, for a God is already 
 wise; and if there be any man who is wise, neither is he 
 a Philosopher. Nor are the ignorant Philosophers ; they 
 desire not to become wise; for herein lieth the evil of 
 Ignorance, that when a man is without Virtue and 
 Wisdom, he nevertheless thinketh that he is sufficiently 
 furnished therewith, and no man desireth that which he 
 thinketh he lacketh not. 
 
 Who, then, Diotima, said I, are the Philosophers, if neither 
 the wise nor the ignorant are Philosophers ? 
 
 A child could answer that, she said: They that are 
 betwixt the two sorts, even as Eros himself is. For Wisdom 
 indeed is of the number of those things which are the most 
 beautiful; and Eros is desire that fluttereth about the Beautiful; 
 wherefore it foUoweth that Eros is a Lover of Wisdom, a 
 Philosopher, being betwixt the wise and the ignorant. 
 Whereof his parentage is the cause also ; for his Father 
 
 2e 
 
418 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 iari καΐ βύττόρου, μητρός δε ου σοφής καΧ άττόρου. ή μεν 
 ουν φύσις του Βαίμονος, ώ φίΧβ %ώκρατβς, αΰτη' ον δε συ 
 C ωηθης "Έιρωτα elvai, θαυμαστον ούΒεν βτταθβς. ωήθης δε, 
 ώς €μοΙ Εοκ6Ϊ τβκμαυρομβντι βξ ων συ λεγε^?, το έρώμβνον 
 "Έίρωτα elvaty ου το βρών. Βία ταΰτά σοι, οΐμαι, ττά^καΚος 
 €φαίν€το 6 'Έίρως. καΐ yap βστι το βραστον το τω οντί 
 καΧον καΐ άβρον καϊ τέΧβον καΐ μακαρνστόν το δε γε 
 €ρων αλΧην IBeav τοιαύτην €'χον, οίαν εγώ ΒιήΧθον. 
 
 206 Δ Έίστίν άρα ξυΧληβΒην, βφη, 6 βρως του το αηαθον αυτω 
 €ivaL aeL ^Αληθέστατα, βφην ε'γώ, λεγεί?. 
 
 Β yJT€ οη τούτου ο βρως βστιν αευ, η ο η, των τίνα 
 
 τροτΓον Βιωκοντων αυτό καΐ iv tlvl ττράξβί ή σττουΒη καΐ η 
 σύντασις βρως αν καΧοΙτο ; τι τούτο τυγχ^άνβι ον το 
 epyov ; εχε^? είττείν ; Ου μέντ αν σε, εφην iyco, ω 
 Αίοτίμα, ίθαύμαζον eirl σοφία καΐ βφοίτων τταρα σε αύτα 
 ταντα μαθησομβνος. 'Αλλ εγώ σοί, εφη, €ρώ. εστί yap 
 τοΰτο τόκος iv καΧω καΐ κατά το σώμα καΐ κατά την 
 ψυχ^ην. Μαντείας, ην δ' ε'γώ, ΒεΙται ο tc ττοτέ Xey€ίς, καϊ 
 
 C ου μανθάνω. 'Αλλ* εγώ, η δ' η, σαφεστβρον έρώ. κυοϋσι, 
 yap, εφη, ώ ^ώκρατες, ττάντες άνθρωποι, καϊ κατά το σώμα 
 καϊ κατά την ^^τυγγιν, καϊ εττειΒάν εν tlvl ηΧικία yεvωvτav, 
 τίκτειν ετηθυμεί ημών η φύσις. τίκτειν δε εν μεν αίσγ^ρω 
 ου Βύναται, εν δε τω καΧω. ή yap άνΒρος καϊ yυvaικoς 
 συνουσία τόκος εστίν. εστί δε τοΰτο θείον το 'π■payμa, καϊ 
 τοΰτο εν θνητω οντι τω ζωω άθάνατον ενεστιν, ή κύησις 
 καϊ ή yεvvησις, ταΰτα δ' εν τω άναρμόστω άΒύνατον 
 
 D yεvεσθaι. άνάρμοστον δ* εστί το αίσχ^ρον τταντί τω θείω, 
 το δε καΧον άρμοττον. Μοΐρα ουν καϊ ΈΙΧείθυια ή 
 καΧΧονή εστί τη yεvεσει. Βιά ταΰτα όταν μεν καΧω ττροσ- 
 ττεΧάζη το κυοΰν, ιλεών τε yίyvετaι καϊ εύφραινόμενον 
 Βια'χεΙται καϊ τίκτει τε και yεvva• όταν δε αίσ'χ^ρω, 
 σκυθρωττόν τε καϊ Χυττούμενον συσττειράται καϊ άττοτρεττεται 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 419 
 
 is wise and rich, and his Mother is not wise and poor. 
 This, my dear Socrates, is the nature of the Daemon Eros ; 
 and I marvel not that thou though test another was Eros 
 — for thou thoughtest, as I judge from what thou sayest, 
 that the Beloved, not That which Loveth, is Eros. For this 
 cause, methinks, Eros seemed all beautiful in thine eyes, for 
 'tis the Beloved that is indeed fair and delicate and perfect, 
 and worthy to be accounted happy ; but as for That which 
 Loveth, it is of another kind, such as I have declared. 
 
 * * * * •}(• * 
 
 The sum of the whole matter, she said, is this : That Love 
 which is Eros is the desire of having the Good alway for his 
 own. Most true, I said. Since this is what Love ever desir- 
 eth, she said, how shall a man follow after this, and what shall 
 he do that his diligence and endeavour in following after it 
 may be rightly called Love ? What is the very thing which 
 he must bring to pass ? Canst thou tell it ? I cannot tell it, 
 I said, else should I not be here drawn by thy wisdom, thy 
 disciple come unto thee to learn this very thing. 
 
 Then I will tell it unto thee, she said: — The bringing 
 of somewhat to timely birth in Beauty, both according to the 
 flesh and according to the spirit — that is the Work of Love. 
 Thy meaning needeth a prophet for the interpretation thereof, 
 I said : I understand it not. Well, I will make it plain, 
 she said. 
 
 All mankind, Socrates, do conceive according to the flesh 
 and according to the spirit ; and when we are come to the 
 proper time of life, our nature desireth to bring forth : but 
 it cannot bring forth in that which is deformed, only in that 
 which is beautiful: and this work which it doeth when it 
 conceiveth and begetteth is divine : this work is that which 
 in the life of the mortal creature hath immortality ; but it 
 cannot be accomplished in aught that is unfit : now, that which 
 is deformed is unfit for the divine ; and the beautiful is fit : 
 Beauty, therefore, is the Fate which ruleth nativities and the 
 Divine Midwife. Wherefore, when that which hath conceived 
 cometh nigh unto that which is beautiful, it is filled with soft 
 delight, and being thereby relaxed bringeth forth and be- 
 getteth ; but when it• cometh nigh unto that which is 
 deformed, it is drawn together with frowning and pain, and 
 
420 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 καΧ aveiXKeraL καΐ ου fyevva, αλλ' Ισγον το κύημα χαλεττω? 
 φβρβί. οθβν Βη τω κυουντί re καΧ ήΒη στταρ^γώντι, ττοΧλη 
 Ε ή Ίττοίησίς yeyove irepl το καλόν Βία το /ι,εγαλτ;? ωΒΐνος 
 άτΓθ\ν€ίν τον β'χοντα, βστί <γάρ, ω Αωκρατες, €φη, ου του 
 καΧου 6 βρως, ώς συ οϊβι. Άλλα τι μην ; Ύής ^^βννησεω^ 
 καΐ του τόκου iv τω καΧω. E^lev, ην δ' εγώ• ΐΐάνυ μβν 
 οΰν, βφη. Ύί Βη οΰν της ^βννήσεως ; οτι, aeiyevh €στί 
 207 καΐ άθάνατον ώ? θνητω η ιγέννησις. αθανασίας Be 
 άνα^καΐον έττίθυμβΐν μβτα αγαθοί) €Κ των ώμοΧο^γη μένων, 
 eiirep του άβαθου βαυτω βίναι ael βρως εστίν. avajKaiov 
 Βη €κ τούτου του Χο^γου καΐ της αθανασίας τον έρωτα 
 βΐναι. 
 
 308 ε Ο (^ μεν οΰν ε^γκύμονες, εφη, κατά σώματα οντες ιτρος 
 
 τας γυναίκας μάΧΧον τρεττονταί καϊ ταύττ) ερωτικοί είσι. 
 
 Βία ιταιΒο^ονίας άθανασίαν καϊ μνήμην καϊ εύΒαιμονίαν, ώς 
 
 οϊονταί, αύτοΐς εΙς τον εττει,τα γ^ρόνον ττάντα ττορίζόμενον 
 
 209 οί Βε κατά την ψυχτ^ν — είσΐ yap οΰν, εφη, οί εν ταΐς 
 
 ψυ'χ^αΐς κυοΰσιν ετυ μαΧΧον η εν τοις σώμασιν, α ψυ^τ} 
 
 ττροσήκει καϊ κυήσαί καϊ κυεΐν. τί οΰν ττροσήκεί ; 
 
 φρόνησίν τε καϊ την αΧΧην άρετήν ων Βή είσί καϊ οΐ 
 
 ΤΓΟίηταϊ ττάντες γεννήτορες καϊ των Βημιουρ^ών όσοι 
 
 Χέζονται εΰρετικοϊ είναι. ττοΧύ Βε μεγίστη, εφη, καϊ 
 
 καΧΧίστη της φρονήσεως ή ττερϊ τας των ττόΧεών τε καϊ 
 
 οικήσεων Βιακοσμήσεις, fj Βή ονομά εστί σωφροσύνη τε καϊ 
 
 Β Βικαιοσύνη. τούτων αΰ όταν τις εκ νέου έ^κύμων η την 
 
 ψνχήν θειος ών, καϊ ήκούσης της ήΧικίας τίκτειν τε καϊ 
 
 ^ενναν ήΒη ετΓίθυμεΐ. ζητεί Βή, οϊμαι, καϊ οΰτος ττεριιών 
 
 το καΧον εν φ αν ^εννήσειεν εν τω yap αίσ'χ^ρω ούΒεττοτε 
 
 yεvvήσει. τα τε οΰν σώματα τα καΧα μάΧΧον ή τα 
 
 αίσγ^ρα ασπάζεται άτε κυών, καϊ εαν εντύ'χτ) ψυγ^β καΧη 
 
 καϊ yεvvaίa καϊ εύφυεΐ, ττάνυ Βή άσττάζεται το ξυναμ- 
 
 φότερον, καϊ ττρος τούτον τον άνθρωττον ευθύς εΰττορεΐ 
 
 C X6yωv ττερϊ αρετής καϊ ττερϊ οίον γ^ρή είναι τον άνΒρα τον 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 421 
 
 turneth itself away, and is rolled up, and begetteth not, but 
 holdeth in that which it hath conceived, and is in sore dis- 
 tress. So it cometh to pass that when any one hath conceived, 
 and is already big, he fluttereth alway with vehement desire 
 around that which is beautiful, because the possession thereof 
 easeth him of his sore travail : for, she said, Love is not ful- 
 filled in the Beautiful as thou thinkest, Socrates. Wherein, 
 then ? In begetting and bringing forth in the Beautiful. 
 So be it, said I. Yea, she said, it is so ; but wherefore in 
 begetting ? Because this is that which, in the Mortal, is 
 Immortal from generation unto generation without end. 
 Immortality, together with Good, Love must needs desire, 
 according to our premises, for Love is desire of having Good 
 alway for his own. This, then, followeth further from our 
 argument, that Love aimeth at Immortality. 
 
 •it -x- -it * -x- * 
 
 They who conceive after the flesh, she said, turn them 
 rather to the love of women, by the procreation of children 
 laying up for themselves, as they think, immortality and 
 remembrance and felicity for evermore : but they who conceive 
 after the spirit — for, she said, there are who conceive in their 
 souls more truly than others conceive in their bodies — these, 
 she said, conceive that which is meet for the soul to conceive 
 and to bear : and what is that ? Wisdom and all Virtue ; 
 whereof all the poets are begetters, and every workman of whom 
 we say that he is a cunning inventor : but the greatest by far, 
 she said, and the fairest part of Wisdom is that which hath to 
 do with the ordering of cities and households, which is called 
 by the names of Temperance and Justice. The man who in his 
 youth hath conceived these in his soul, being inspired of God, 
 as soon as the time of life cometh, desireth to bring forth and 
 beget: so he goeth about seeking the Beautiful wherein he 
 may beget ; for in the deformed he will never beget : and 
 beautiful bodies rather than deformed he greeteth with wel- 
 come, inasmuch as he hath conceived : and if he happen upon 
 a beautiful soul of noble nature and excellent parts, in a beau- 
 tiful body, he greeteth the twain — beautiful body and beautiful 
 soul — with double welcome; and upon him who hath the 
 twain he straightway, •ndeavouring to instruct, poureth out 
 Speech in abundance concerning Virtue and what the Good 
 
422 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ατ^αθον καΐ a έττιτηΒευβίν, και βττι,'χ^ειρβΐ τταώβύβίν. άτττο- 
 μ€νο^ yap, οίμαι, του καλόν καΐ ομιλών αύτω, α ττάλαι, 
 Ικνει, τίκτει καΐ yevva, καΐ τταρων καΐ αιτών μβμνημενο^ζ, 
 καϊ το <γ6ννηθ€ν συνβκτρίφβι Koivfj μβτ βκβίνου, ωστβ ττόλύ 
 μβίζω κοινωνίαν της των τταίΒων ττρος αλλήλους οΐ τοιούτοι 
 ϊσ'χουσι καϊ φιλίαν βββαιοτβραν, ατ€ καλλιονων καϊ 
 αθανατωτβρων τταίΒων κβκοινωνηκότβς. και ττάς αν Ββξαιτο 
 
 D ίαυτω τοιούτους τταΐΒας μάλλον yeyovevai η τους άνθρωττί- 
 νους, και εις ^Όμηρον άττοβλέψας καϊ ΐΙσίοΒον καϊ τους 
 άλλους ττοιητας τους άβαθους ζηλών, οΙα €Kyova εαυτών 
 καταλβίτΓουσιν, α βκβίνοις άθάνατον κλέος καϊ μνήμην 
 τταρβχβται αυτά τοιαύτα οντά' el δε βούλει, βφη, οΐους 
 Aυκoϋpyoς τταΐ^ας κατβλίττβτο iv ΑακεΒαίμονι σωτήρας της 
 ΑακβΒαίμονος καϊ ώς βττος elireiv της 'ΈιλΧά^ος. τίμιος δε 
 Ίταρ ύμΐν καϊ Ζ^ολων Βια την τών νόμων yevvησιv, καϊ 
 
 Ε αΧλοι άλλοθι ΊΓοΧλα'χοΰ άνδρες, καϊ iv ''ΈλΧησι καϊ iv 
 βαρβάροις, ττολΧα καϊ καλά άττοφηνάμβνοι epya, yevvij' 
 σαντες τταντοίαν άρβτην ων καϊ iepa ττολλα ήΒη yiyove 
 Βια τους τοιούτους τταιΒας, Βια δε τους άνθρωττίνους 
 ούΒβνός Ίτω. 
 
 Ύαύτα μεν ονν τα ipωτικa ϊσως, ω Χώκρατες, καν συ 
 210 μνηθείης' τα Be τέλεα καϊ iiroTTTiKa, ων eveKa καϊ ταύτα 
 €στιν, iav τις ορθώς μετίτ), ουκ οΙΒ^ el οΙός τ αν εϊης. 
 €ρώ μεν οΰν, εφη, εγώ καϊ ττροθυμίας ούΒεν άττολείψω• 
 ττειρώ Be εττεσθαι, αν οΐός τε 'ρς. Αεί yap, εφη, τον 
 ορθώς Ιοντα εττϊ τούτο το 7Γpάyμa άρ'χεσθαι μεν νέον οντά 
 Ιεναι ε'ττΐ τα καλά σώματα, καϊ ιτρώτον μεν, iav ορθώς 
 rjyriTai 6 ηyoύμevoς, ενός αύτον σώματος ipav καϊ ivτaΰθa 
 yεvvav λoyoυς καλούς, εττειτα δε αύτον κατανοήσαι, οτι το 
 
 Β κάλλος το ε'ττΐ οτωοΰν σώματι τω ε'ττΐ ετερω σώματι 
 άΒεΧφόν iστι, καϊ εΐ Βεΐ Βιώκειν το iir εϊΒει καλόν, ττολλη 
 άνοια μη ουχ εν τε καϊ ταύτον ήyεΐσθaι το ε'ττΐ ττάσι τοις 
 σώμασι κάλλος' τοϋτο Β' ivvoησavτa καταστήναι ττάντων 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 423 
 
 Man ought to be and do ; for, methinks, when he possesseth 
 the Beautiful One and converseth with him, or being absent 
 remembereth him, that is brought to birth which long-time 
 before was conceived ; and that which is born these two together 
 rear, so that they have a stronger bond betwixt them than 
 children after the flesh, and a surer friendship than spouses, 
 inasmuch as they have in common fairer and more immortal 
 children. Who would not rather have born unto him such 
 children than children after the flesh ? Who, having con- 
 sidered Homer and Hesiod and the other great poets, account- 
 eth them not blessed, in that they have children which, being 
 themselves immortal, bestow on their parents immortal fame 
 and remembrance for evermore ? as do also, she said, the chil- 
 dren which Lycurgus left behind in Lacedaemon, saviours of 
 Lacedaemon, yea of Greece ; and amongst you of Athens, she 
 said, Solon is held in honour because of the laws which he 
 begat ; and in many other places, both throughout Greece and 
 amongst the barbarians, are men honoured for the fair works 
 which they have brought to light, and the diverse virtues 
 which they have begotten — ^yea, even worshipped, because of 
 these their children ; but because of children after the flesh 
 hath no man been worshipped. 
 
 Into these Lesser Mysteries of Eros, peradventure, mightest 
 thou, even thou Socrates, be initiated ; but his Greater Mys- 
 teries of the End and the Perfect Vision, for whose sake, if 
 any man shall pursue after them in the right way, these Lesser 
 Mysteries are performed, I know not if thou art able to receive. 
 Nevertheless, she said, I will do what in me lies to open them 
 unto thee ; do thou endeavour to follow if thou canst. 
 
 He who would rightly approach this Initiation whereof I 
 now speak must begin in his youth, and come near unto Beau- 
 tiful Bodies : and first, if his leader lead him aright, he will 
 be smitten with love of one of these, and will straightway of 
 his love engender Beautiful Discourse. Thereafter he will 
 perceive of himself without instruction that the Beauty which 
 belongeth to any Corporeal Body is kin to the Beauty of 
 another ; and that if the Specifick Beauty is that which must 
 be sought after, 'twould be foolishness to think that the Beauty 
 which belongeth to all ^dies is not one and the same. When 
 he hath comprehended this he must needs become the lover of 
 
424 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 των καλών σωμάτων βραστην, €νος Be το σφοΒρα τούτο 
 'χαΚάσαί καταφρονησαντα καΐ σμικρόν η^ησάμενον μετά 
 Be ταύτα το iv ταΐς ψυγ^αΐς κάΧλος τίμίώτερον ή^ησασθαι 
 τον ev τω σώματι, ώστε καΐ eav εττιεικης ων την ψυχ^ην 
 
 C τις καΐ [eav] σμικρόν άνθος εχτ/, έξαρκεΐν αύτω και epdv 
 καΐ κηΒεσθαι καΐ τίκτειν λόγου? τοιούτους και ζητεΐν, 
 οϊτινες ττοιησονσι βεΧτίους τους νέους, ϊνα αναηκασθτι αν 
 θεάσασθαι το εν τοις εττιτηΒεύμασι καΐ τοις νομοις καΧον 
 καΐ τούτο ιΒεΐν, οτι rrrdv αυτό αύτω ξυγγενες εστίν, ΐνα το 
 Ίτερι το σώμα καΧον σμικρόν τι ήγησηται εΙναί' μετά Βε 
 τα ετΓίτηΒεύματα εττΐ τας εττιστημας άηαηείν, ϊνα ΪΒύ) αν 
 ετΓίστημών κάΧΧος, και βΧεττων ττρος ττοΧύ ηΒη το καΧον 
 
 Ό μηκέτι τω τταρ' ενί, ώσττερ οίκετης, αηαιτών τταιΒαρίον 
 κάΧΧος ή άνθρώτΓον τίνος η εττιτηΒενματος ενός ΒουΧεύων 
 φανΧος Ύ) και σμικροΧο^γος, άΧλ* εττΐ το ττοΧν ττελαγο? 
 τετραμμενος τού καΧού και θεωρών ττοΧΧούς καΐ καΧονς 
 Xoyovς και με^αΧοτΓρεττεΐς τΙκτύ] καϊ Βιανοηματα εν 
 φιλοσοφία άφθόνω, εως αν ενταύθα ρωσθεις και αυξηθείς 
 κατίΒτ) τίνα έττιστημην μίαν τοιαύτην, η εστί καΧον 
 
 Ε τοιούΒε' ΐίειρώ Be μοι, εφη, τον νουν ττροσε'χειν ώς οίον 
 Τ€ μάλιστα. 
 
 ' Ος yap αν μ^χρί' ενταύθα ττρος τα ερωτικά πταιΒα^ω- 
 ^ηθχί, θεώμενος εφεξής τε και ορθώς τα καλά, ττρος τεΧος 
 ηΒη ίων τών ερωτικών εξαίφνης κατόψεταί τι θαυμαστον 
 την φύσιν καλόν, τούτο εκείνο, ώ %ώκρατες, ου Βη ένεκεν 
 και οι εμττροσθεν ττάντες ττόνοι ήσαν, ττρώτον μεν άει ον 
 211 καϊ οΰτε ηιηνόμενον ούτε άπτοΚλύμενον, ούτε αυξανόμενον 
 οντε φθΐνον, εττειτα ου τη μεν καΧόν, τη δ' αίσ'χ^ρόν, ούΒε 
 τότε μεν, τότε Β ου, ούΒε ττρος μεν το καΧον, ττρός Βε το 
 αίσχ^ρόν, ούδ* ένθα μεν καλόν, ένθα Βε αίσχρόν, ως τισι 
 μεν ον καΧον, τισι Βε αίσ'χρον. ούΒ^ αύ φαντασθησεται 
 αύτω το καΧον οίον ιτρόσωττόν τι ούΒε 'χείρες ούΒε άλΧο 
 ούΒεν ων σώμα μετέχει, ούΒε τις λόγο? ούΒέ τις εττιστημη 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 425 
 
 all Beautiful Bodies, and his vehement love of the one Body 
 he will remit, despising it now and thinking it a small thing. 
 Thereafter cometh the time when he deemeth the Beauty that 
 is in Souls more precious than the Beauty in the Body ; so 
 that if any one hath some goodness of Soul, but little comeli- 
 ness of Body, such an one pleaseth him well, and he loveth 
 him and careth for him, and in companionship with him 
 bringeth to birth, and seeketh after, such Discourse as shall 
 make young men better ; seeking after this, he is constrained 
 to survey that Beauty which is in Morals and Laws, and seeth 
 clearly that it is all of one kindred. Apprehending this 
 Beauty, he must needs deem the Beauty of the Body a small 
 thing. 
 
 After Morals, behold him next led up to Sciences, that he 
 may see their Beauty ; and looking at Beauty now widely ex- 
 tended, may no longer be as a bondman, mean and paltry, 
 enslaved unto the Beauty of one, — unto the Beauty of some 
 boy, or man, or custom, — but having turned him unto the 
 Great Sea of Beauty, and looking upon it, may bring forth 
 many Arguments fair and high, many Thoughts out of the 
 fulness of Philosophy, until, having been there strengthened 
 and increased, he can discern that One Science which com- 
 prehendeth that One Beauty. Now, I beseech thee, she 
 said, hearken, as diligently as thou canst, to my words and 
 understand them. 
 
 Whosoever hath been led by his preceptor thus far into 
 the Mysteries of Eros, and hath surveyed beautiful things in 
 the right order, when he cometh at last to the end of his 
 Initiation, on a sudden shall behold a marvel, a Thing of 
 Beauty, That Thing, Socrates, for whose sake all the former 
 labours were endured — That Which Alway Is, without genera- 
 tion or destruction, or increase or decrease ; which is not, on 
 this side, or at this time, beautiful, and on that side, or at that 
 time, deformed ; in comparison with one thing, beautiful, and 
 with another thing, deformed ; in one place beautiful, and in 
 another, deformed; beautiful in the eyes of one man, and in 
 the eyes of another, deformed. Nor will the Thing of Beauty 
 appear unto him as a countenance, or as hands, or as aught 
 which Corporeal Body Ij^th belonging unto it; nor as any 
 Speech, or Science, nor as that which is somewhere in some 
 
426 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 ovBe ΤΓου ov ev βτέρω tlvI, οίον iv ζώω η ev yy ή iv 
 
 Β ούρανω η ev τω άΧλω, αλΧα αντο καθ αυτό μβθ* αυτού 
 μονοβίΒβς ael 6ν, τα δε αΧλα ττάντα καλά έκβίνου μβτβ'χοντα 
 τρότΓον Tiva τοιούτον, οίον ηιηνομίνων re των αΧΚων καΐ 
 άτΓοΧλυμένων μηΒβν εκείνο μήτε το ifKeov μήτε εΚαττον 
 ηίηνεσθαι μηΒε ιτάσ'χειν μηΒεν. όταν Βή tl^ άττο τωνΒε 
 Βία το 6ρθω<ζ τταιΒεραστεΐν εττανοων εκείνο το καΧον αργτ}- 
 ταο καθοράν, σγεΒον αν τι oltttolto τού τέλους. τούτο yap 
 
 C Βή εστί το ορθώς εττϊ τα ερωτικά ίεναι ή ύττ άλλου αγ€- 
 σθαι, άρ'χομενον άττο τώνΒε των καλών εκείνου ένεκα τού 
 καλού άεΐ εττανιεναι, ωσττερ ετταναβασμοΐς γ^ρώμενον, άττο 
 ενός εττΙ Βύο καϊ άττο Βυεΐν εττΙ ττάντα τα καλά, σώματα, 
 καΐ άττο τών καλών σωμάτων εττϊ τα καΧα ετητηΒευματα, 
 καϊ άττο τών καλών εττιτηΒευμάτων εττϊ τα καλά μηθήματα, 
 εστ αν άττο τών μαθημάτων eV εκείνο το μάθημα τελευ- 
 τήστ), 6 εστίν ουκ άλλου η αυτού εκείνου τού καλού 
 
 D μάθημα, καϊ yvcp αυτό τελευτών ο εστί καλόν. ^Ενταύθα 
 τού βίου, ώ φίλε Χώκρατες, εφη ή Μ,αντίνική ξένη, εϊττερ 
 ΊΓου άλλοθι, βιωτον άνθρώττω, θεωμενω αύτο το καλόν, ο 
 εάν ΤΓΟτε ϊΒ^ς, ου κατά γ^ρυσίον τε καϊ εσθητα καϊ τους 
 καλούς τταΐΒάς τε καϊ νεανίσκους Βόξει σοι είναι, ους νύν 
 ορών εκττεττληξαι καϊ έτοιμος εΐ καϊ συ καϊ άλλοι ττολλοί, 
 ορώντες τά τταιΒικά καϊ ξυνόντες άεΐ αύτοΐς, εϊ ττως οΐόν τ 
 ην, μήτε εσθίειν μήτε ττίνειν, αλλά θεάσθαι μόνον καϊ 
 ξυνεΐναι. τι Βήτα, εφη, οΐόμεθα, εϊ τω γένοιτο αύτο το 
 
 Ε καλόν ΙΒεΐν ειλικρινές, καθαρόν, άμικτον, αλλά μη άνάττλεων 
 σαρκών τε άνθρωττίνων καϊ γ^ρωμάτων καϊ άΧλης ττολλής 
 φλυαρίας θνητής, αλλ' αύτο το θεΐον καΧον Βύναιτο 
 μονοειΒες κατιΒεΐν ; άρ^ οϊει, εφη, φαύλον βίον ^ί<γνεσθαι 
 212 εκεΐσε βλέποντος άνθρώττου κάκεΐνο ω Βεΐ θεωμένου καϊ 
 ξυνόντος αύτω ; ή ούκ ενθυμεί, εφη, οτι ενταύθα αύτω 
 μοναγού ηενήσεται, όρώντι ω όρατον το καλόν, τίκτειν ούκ 
 εϊΒωλα αρετής, άτε ουκ εΙΒώλου εφατττομενω, αλλ' αληθή, 
 άτε τού άΧηθούς εφατττομενω, τεκόντι Βε άρετήν αληθή και 
 θρεψαμενω ύττάρ'χει θεοφιλεΐ γενέσθαι και, εϊττερ τω άλλω 
 άνθρώττων, άθανάτω καϊ εκείνω ; 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 427 
 
 other thing, as in a living creature, or in earth, or in heaven, 
 or in any other thing ; but he shall see It as That which Is 
 in Itself, with Itself, of one Torm, Eternal ; and all the other 
 beautiful things he shall see as partaking of It after such 
 manner that, while they come into being and perish, It be- 
 cometh not a whit greater or less, nor suffereth any change at 
 all. 'Tis when a man ascendeth from these beautiful things 
 by the Eight Way of Love, and beginneth to have sight of that 
 Eternal Beauty, — 'tis then, me thinks, that he toucheth the goal 
 For this is the right Way to go into the Mysteries of Eros, or 
 to be led by another — beginning from the beautiful things here, 
 to mount up alway unto that Eternal Beauty, using these things 
 as the steps of a ladder — ascending from one to two, and from 
 two to all. Beautiful Bodies, and from Beautiful Bodies to 
 Beautiful Customs, and from Beautiful Customs to Beautiful 
 Doctrines, and from these till at last, being come unto that 
 which is the Doctrine of the Eternal Beauty and of naught else 
 beside, he apprehendeth what Beauty Itself is. 'Tis then, dear 
 Socrates, said the Woman of Mantinea, that life is worth living, 
 and then only, when a man cometh to behold Beauty Itself ; the 
 which if thou hast once seen, thou wilt hold wealth, and fine 
 raiment, and fair companions, as naught in comparison with it 
 — yea, those fair companions whom thou now lookest upon 
 with amazement, and art ready — thou and many others of thy 
 like — to pass your lives with them, gazing upon them, and, if 
 it were possible, neither eating nor drinking, but only behold- 
 ing them and being with them alway. What thinkest thou, 
 then, she said, if a man could see Beauty Itself, clear, pure, 
 separate, not gross with human flesh, and tainted with colours, 
 and decked out with perishing gauds — what thinkest thou, if 
 he could behold Beauty Itself, divine, uniform ? Thinkest 
 thou, she said, that it would be a paltry life for a man to live, 
 looking unto that, beholding it with the faculty meet therefor, 
 and being with it alway ? Understandest thou not that thus 
 only shall he be able, seeing with that whereby Beauty is seen, 
 to bring forth, not Images of Virtue — for 'tis no Image that he 
 layeth hold of, — but Things True — for he layeth hold of That 
 which is True ; and when he hath brought forth True Virtue 
 and nurtured her, understgndest thou not that then he hath 
 become above all men beloved of God, and himself immortal ! 
 
428 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Observations on the Discourse of Diotima 
 
 The Myth in which Diotima sets forth the parentage and 
 nature of Eros differs in style from the Myth of the Eound 
 People told by Aristophanes, as widely as it is possible for one 
 composition to differ from another. If the Myth of the Pound 
 People is so barbarously grotesque that one has difficulty in 
 recognising it as a Platonic Myth, Diotima's Myth is equally 
 hard to bring under that designation, on account of the pre- 
 valence of philosophical allegory in its style. It is, indeed, in 
 its first part simply a philosophical allegory^ setting forth 
 pictorially an analysis of Love into elements which are seen 
 to be identical with those given by an analysis of Philosophy. 
 "Ερως is neither ΤΙόρος nor Jlevia, but the child of these two ; 
 φιλοσοφία is neither άμαθία nor σοφία, but the outcome of 
 both. This point, however, once reached by the way of alle- 
 gory thinly disguising the results of previous analysis, Diotima's 
 Discourse henceforward assumes the character of true Myth, if 
 not in its matter — for no further narrative is added — yet cer- 
 tainly in its essential form : it becomes an imaginative develop- 
 ment of the notion of φιΧοσοφία: φιλοσοφία is set forth as 
 the Desire of Immortality. Philosophy is not merely a System 
 of Knowledge, but a Life, nay, the Life Eternal — the true Life 
 of the immortal Soul.^ Diotima's Discourse thus ends in the 
 character of a true Myth, setting forth in impassioned imagina- 
 tive language the Transcendental Idea of the Soul. It is out 
 of the mood which expresses itself in, and is encouraged by, 
 such impassioned imaginative language that prophetic visions 
 arise, and great Myths about the Soul's creation, wanderings, 
 and goal. Diotima's Discourse in its latter, non-allegorical, 
 
 1 Plotinus, Enn. iii. 5, maybe read for an elaborate interpretation of Diotima's 
 Allegory : — Zeus is vovs. Aphrodite is ψνχή-, Poros is \6yos, Penia is ΰ\η ; and 
 much more to the same effect. Cf. Cudworth, Intellectual System, vol. ii. p. 37.9 
 (ed. Mosheim and Harrison). 
 
 2 See Zeller's Plato, pp. 191-196 (Eng. Tr.), for the connection made, in the 
 Phaedrus and Symposium, between Eros and Philosophy ; and, especially p. 194, 
 n. 66, for the meaning of Diotima's Discourse, and a protest against the Neo- 
 Platonic interpretation of its meaning adopted by Jahn in his Diss. Plat. 64 ff. 
 and 249 if. 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 429 
 
 part we must regard as a true Myth — although it has no 
 story, no pictures, — because we feel that it might at any 
 moment break out into the language of prophetic vision. 
 
 Its identification of Love and Philosophy is intended to 
 bring home to the Imagination the great Platonic doctrine 
 that Philosophy is Life. The outline, or ideal, presented here, 
 without articulation, to the Imagination, is articulated, still 
 for the Imagination, in the astronomical Eschatology of the 
 Phaedrus Myth ; and for the Understanding, in the account 
 given in the Republic ^ of the Philosophic Nature and of the 
 Education which it needs. A vast non-articulated ideal, like 
 that held up by Diotima in the latter part of her Discourse, 
 lends itself easily to either kind of articulation — it may be 
 articulated in an abstract way as a great system of laws, or 
 pictorially, as a group of symbols making an Allegory which, 
 because it is so vast, easily assumes the character of Myth. 
 And Myth may be painted as well as spoken. As a scheme 
 of education, articulating for the Imagination the Ideal of 
 " Philosophy is Life," the Spanish Chapel fresco, which has 
 already^ been instanced as a painted Myth, may well be 
 placed beside the scheme set forth for the Understanding in 
 the BepuUic. The details in the fresco are the result of 
 minute analysis of the elements which constitute true educa- 
 tion ; but they are so presented to the eye as to reveal to its 
 intuition the spiritual bond which unites them together in 
 one meaning — in one λόγο? τη<ζ μίξεως which transcends the 
 parts. Faith, Hope, and Charity are hovering in the sky, and 
 beneath them, also in the sky, are Courage, Temperance, Justice, 
 Prudence. Beneath these are seated in a row ten Prophets 
 and Apostles, with S. Thomas Aquinas on a throne in the 
 middle. Beneath these again sit the Sciences Divine and 
 Natural, fourteen of them ; and beneath each Science sits her 
 greatest earthly Teacher. 
 
 The separate figures are symbols, and form groups which 
 
 1 485 Β if. That the scheme of education in the Republic articulates for the 
 Understanding an outline, or ideal, presented to the Imagination is plainly 
 admitted. The scheme is called a Myth — as 376 e, Wl oZv, ώσττβρ iv μύθφ 
 μυθοΚο^οϋντέ^ re και σχοΚην ayovres \6τγφ τταώΐύομζν τού$ &v8pas : and 501 Ε, 
 ή πολίτβία ήν μυθοΧο^οϋμ^ν λ07ν: and see Couturat, de Plat. Mythis, p. 50 — 
 "Respublica tota ex ipsius ai^ptoris sententia mythica est: cf, Tim. 26 o, 
 Hemp. 420 c, 536 b, c, 376 d, 501 E, 443 b, c." 
 
 2 Supra, pp. 114 and 257. 
 
430 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 may be interpreted as Allegories, but the whole picture which 
 contains them is a Myth. 
 
 It is difficult, as I have pointed out before, to distinguish, 
 in the work of a great creative artist, between Allegory and 
 Myth. Allegory, consciously employed as such by a man of 
 genius, always tends to pass into Myth. In dealing with 
 this point I have said that Plato's Cave, carefully constructed 
 as it is in all its detail, like the Spanish Chapel fresco, to 
 give a picture of results already in the possession of its 
 author, is, beyond all that, a wonder for the eye of Imagina- 
 tion to be grasped in one impression. Beneath the inter- 
 pretation of the Allegory we are aware of the enigma of the 
 Myth. Plato, we feel, had seen the whole before he began to 
 articulate the parts. Perhaps, as I ventured to suppose, some 
 weird scene in a Syracusan quarry gave the first suggestion. 
 
 I said that, although the former part of Diotima's Dis- 
 course is an Allegory, the latter part has the true character- 
 istic of the Myth, setting forth, without narrative or pictures 
 indeed, but in impassioned imaginative language, the Tran- 
 scendental Idea of the Soul. It is only by accident, we feel, 
 that the Discourse does not break out into the language of 
 prophetic vision. 
 
 The Diotima of this Discourse may be taken as a study 
 of the Prophetic Temperament. 
 
 Let me try to bring out the essential nature of this 
 temperament by making some passages in Spinoza's Tractatus 
 Theologico - Foliticus do service as a commentary on Plato's 
 study. To appreciate the nature of the prophetic tempera- 
 ment and the use of prophecy as determined by the great 
 Jewish critic — he was one of the founders of biblical criticism 
 — is, I think, to go far towards appreciating the function of 
 Myth in Plato's Philosophy. 
 
 The passages to which I refer are in the first and 
 second chapters of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Spinoza 
 begins by distinguishing teachers of natural science from 
 prophets. Although natural science is divine, its teachers 
 cannot be called prophets ; for what the teachers of natural 
 science impart as certain, other men receive as certain, and 
 that not merely on authority but of their own knowledge. 
 It is by the faculty of Imagination that prophets are dis- 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 431 
 
 tinguished from teachers of natural science. By Imagination 
 prophets perceive the revelations of God and transcend the 
 limits of the Scientific Understanding, This is why they 
 impart what they perceive almost always in parables, express- 
 ing spiritual truths by means of sensible images ; for this 
 is the method which their faculty naturally prescribes. 
 Prophets are not endowed with a more perfect Intelligence, 
 but with a more vivid Imagination than other men. Pro- 
 phecy, as it' depends on Imagination, does not γβτ se involve 
 certainty : prophets are not made certain of the revelation of 
 God by the revelation itself, but by a sign. Thus Abraham 
 (Genesis xv. 8), on hearing the promise of God, asked for a 
 sign. He, indeed, believed God, and did not ask for a sign 
 in order that he might believe God, but in order that he 
 might know that the thing was actually promised to him by 
 God.^ Herein prophecy is inferior to natural knowledge, 
 which needs no sign, but has its certainty in itself. The 
 prophet's certainty is not metaphysical but moral. The 
 prophet may be recognised by three marks: (1) he imagines 
 the things revealed as vividly as if they were objects of 
 waking sense, (2) he needs a sign, and (3) — and chiefly — he 
 has a mind inclined to that which is just and good. Though 
 this may seem to show that prophecy and revelation are un- 
 certain, yet they have much that is certain ; for God never 
 deceives pious men, " His Elect." He uses them as instru- 
 ments of His goodness, as he uses the wicked as instruments 
 of His wrath. Now, since the signs are merely to persuade 
 the prophet in a matter where the certainty is not meta- 
 physical but moral, it follows that the signs are suited to the 
 opinions and capacity of the prophet ; and the revelation (i.e. 
 the thing imagined) varies with the temperament (gay or sad), 
 and the beliefs, of the prophet. The conclusion of all is that 
 prophecy never adds to the knowledge of the prophet or of 
 others, but leaves them in their preconceived opinions ; so 
 that, in merely speculative matters, we are not at all bound 
 to believe prophets ; but in matters which concern righteous- 
 ness and moral character we are.^ 
 
 ^ Similarly, miracles do not make us believe in the existence of God. We 
 must believe in the existence of %οά before we can believe in the occurrence of 
 miracles. 
 
 2 Prophecy, says Professor P. Gardner {Joioett Lectures, 1901, p. 117), "is 
 
432 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 I offer no particular remarks on the foregoing passage, 
 but merely recommend it to the attention of the reader, as 
 defining the use of Prophecy in a manner similar to that in 
 which I think the use of the Platonic Myth ought to be 
 defined. 
 
 With Spinoza's view of the end of Prophecy, Henry More's 
 view of the end of Scripture has much in common. The in- 
 terpretation of the literal text, he explains,'• must always 
 depend on what we have learned from Philosophy, not from 
 Scripture ; but the sole end of the Scripture is the furthering 
 of the Holy Life. 
 
 Similarly, John Smith says,^ " Christ's main scope was to 
 promote an Holy Life as the best and most compendious way 
 to a right Belief. He hangs all true acquaintance with 
 Divinity upon the doing God's will. If any man will do his 
 will he shall know the doctrine, whether it be of God." 
 
 This view of the meaning of Prophecy, and generally of 
 inspired scriptures, held by the Cambridge Platonists in in- 
 dependent agreement with Spinoza, is one which finds much 
 favour at the present day among those critical students of 
 the Bible whose paramount interest is still in religion as a 
 practical concern. Their teaching on the subject of " inspira- 
 tion " and " divine revelation," in my view, throws much light 
 on the subject of this work. I would summarise my advice 
 to those who wish to realise for themselves the function of 
 the Platonic Myth as follows : — After reading Plato's Myths, 
 each one in its own context, seal the effect of the whole by 
 reading the work of some other great master of Myth — best 
 of all the Divina Commedia ; then turn to the writings of 
 those modern critics of the Bible whose paramount interest is 
 still in religion as a practical concern. "Were the student to 
 undertake the last -mentioned part of this programme, he 
 would probably find the word " inspiration " a difficulty. He 
 would probably think that the use made of the word by the 
 
 based on insight, and sees not future events but the tendency of existing forces, 
 and looks beneath the surface of the present and sees its true inwardness. . . . 
 The Jewish prophet dealt far less with the future than with the present. He 
 was first and foremost a teacher of righteousness — one who explained the pur- 
 poses of God and made his ways bare to man. He was, in fact, a preacher." 
 
 1 Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Gahhala, ch. xii., especially § 3, 
 pp. 150, 151, ed. 1662. 
 
 2 Select Discourses (1660), p. 9 ("The True Way or Method of attaining 
 Divine Knowledge"), and cf. pp. 169 flF. ("Of Prophesie"). 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 433 
 
 critics is vague and uncertain. But let him remember that 
 Plato's use of the corresponding Ι/οω? (especially where e/)»? 
 and φιλοσοφία are identified, as in Diotima's Discourse) is 
 equally vague. Precision is not to be looked for in the 
 description of such a condition or gift. Indeed, Diotima's 
 φιλοσοφία is perhaps even more vague than the " inspiration " 
 of these critics; for the former is the condition of an in- 
 dividual, while the community rather than the individual is 
 the recipient of the latter — " It is not the individual so 
 much as the society or community which is the recipient of 
 divine inspiration," says Professor P. Gardner,^ interpreting 
 Eitschl. While the " inspiration " of the individual is an 
 abnormal condition, difficult to describe psychologically, and 
 still more difficult to estimate in respect of "value," the 
 " inspiration " received by a community is something which 
 can be definitely reviewed, being the series of ideas of better- 
 ment which spring up in the community one after another 
 and actually determine its development. The historian may 
 find it difficult to show how this idea or that arose ; but he 
 can generally describe the circumstances in which, having 
 arisen, it " caught on " and became an effective factor in the 
 development of the community. The " idea of emancipating 
 slaves " may serve as an example of what is meant when the 
 "inspiration received by a community" is spoken of; and a 
 prophet is one who can put such an idea before his contem- 
 poraries so vividly that it must perforce, sooner or later, 
 realise itself in practice. When we look back over the past 
 life of a nation we see how true it is that the grain of 
 mustard seed becomes the great tree. How the seed came we 
 seldom can tell ; it is so small that we should not even have 
 noticed it at all, unless the tree had grown out of it. We 
 rather infer it from the tree; and if the tree is good we are 
 apt to think of the seed as " divinely implanted " in some 
 special way. What we can trace clearly to antecedents we 
 do not regard with religious feeling ; but when we come to 
 some little inexplicable thing, which we recognise, after the 
 
 ^ Jowett Lectures, p. 270. Expressing his own view Professor Gardner says : 
 "It may be that in this matter Ritschl goes too far, for, after all, it is only in 
 the consciousness of individuals that divine inspiration can be realised ; religious 
 utterances must come from indi^duals ; and the will of individuals must lead 
 society in the right way : nevertheless there is profound and most important 
 truth in the recognition of the divine mission of the society." 
 
 2f 
 
434 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 event, as source of great things, we say that it comes by- 
 divine dispensation — θβία μοίρα. 
 
 As the influence of the new biology makes itself more 
 and more felt in the field of historical study, we may expect 
 that the doctrine of " inspiration received by the community " 
 will recommend itself more and more to religious minds, as a 
 solution of the difficulty which few indeed are content to put 
 by wholly — the difficulty of conceiving how the development 
 of beautifully articulated organisms can take place along lines 
 opened up by " accidental A^ariations." This difficulty the 
 new biology has brought home to us thoroughly, by showing 
 us how decisive is the part played in evolution by these 
 " accidental variations " among the factors which maintain 
 the moving equilibrium of life. The objections which stand 
 in the way of accepting the alternative solution — Weismann's 
 theory, which explains " accidental variations " as provided for 
 in the original germ-plasma — seem to be at least as formid- 
 able as those which might be brought against the theory of 
 "divine inspiration of which the community or race is the 
 recipient/' 
 
 II 
 
 EXCUKSUS ON THE HiSTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF DAEMONS 
 
 (Symposium, 202 e) 
 
 The doctrine, here enunciated, of Βαίμονβ^ who perform 
 the office of interpreters and mediators between the Gods and 
 Men, played a great part in the History of Eeligious Belief. 
 
 In its original sense Βαίμων is synonymous with θεός, 
 and means simply " a divine immortal being." But Hesiod's 
 Βαίμονβς αηνοί Ιτηχθόνίτου^ introduced a specification of the 
 term. These Βαίμονβς εττιχθόνωι, are indeed " divine immortal 
 beings," but they are not έττουράνίοι or "ΟΧυμττον βχοντες, 
 " divine immortal beings who dwell in Heaven " ; they dwell 
 in " the parts about the Earth," ^ and more especially " in the 
 Air." They are, in fact, the disembodied spirits of the men of 
 a long past age — the Golden Age. When these men died, 
 
 1 0. et D. 108. 
 2 The region described as irepl yijp in Phaedrus, 257 A. 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 435 
 
 their bodies were buried ; but their immortal spirits remained 
 in the neighbourhood of the Earth, and will ever remain 
 there, to be the Guardians and Patrons of mortal men : — 
 
 \ρν(Τ€ον fiev πρωτϋστα yevos μερόττων ανθρώπων 
 αθάνατοι ποίησαν Όλνμπυα δώματ' €)(^ovt€S. 
 οΐ μ€ν €7Γΐ Κρόνου ήσαν, οτ ονρανψ Ιμβασίλ^ν^ν, 
 ώ? δ€ θεο\ ζώβσκον, άκηδ^α θνμον €χοντ€<5, 
 νόσφίν άτ€ρθ€ πόνων καΐ 6ϊζνο<ζ' ovSe τι δειλόν 
 yyjpas ίπην aUl 81 ττόδα? καΐ \€Ϊρα<; όμοιοι 
 Τ€ρποντ kv θαΧίτισι κακών βκτοσθβν απάντων, 
 θνησκον δ' ώ? νπνφ δξδμημίνοι' ίσθλα δέ ττάντα 
 τοΐσιν €ην' καρπον δ* Ιφερ^ ζζίδωρος αρονρα 
 αυτόματη πολλόν τ€ καΐ άφθονον οΐ δ' ΐθζλημοί 
 ησνχοι 'ipya νίμοντο συν ίσθλοΐσυν πολζβσσιν. 
 ανταρ ίπ€ίδη τοντο yevos κατά γα?α κάλυ^εν, 
 ot μ^ν δαι/χονε? ayvol Ιπιγθόνιοι καλίονται, 
 €σθλοί, άλζζίκακοί, φνλακ€ς θνητών ανθρώπων, 
 πλοντοδοται' και τοντο γέρα? βασιλήϊον έ'σ-χον.^ 
 
 When the men of the Silver Age died, their spirits went 
 under the Earth. They became ύττοχθόνιοι μάκαρβς θνητοί^ 
 — a difficult phrase, on which Rohde may be consulted.^ They 
 too, although their works on Earth were displeasing to the 
 Gods, receive honour and worship from men. 
 
 The third age was that of the Copper Men. They did 
 evil on Earth, and went down nameless to the black pit of 
 Hades.* 
 
 The fourth age was that of the Heroes — those who 
 fought at Thebes and Troy. Some of them died ; some of 
 them were translated in the flesh to the Islands of the 
 Blessed, where they enjoy everlasting felicity : — 
 
 TOv<s μ\ν θάνατον reAos ά/χφ€κάλυ^€, 
 TOt? δ€ διχ' ανθρώπων βίοτον κοΧ ηθζ όττάσσα? 
 Zev? Κ.ρονίδη<5 κατενασσε πατήρ Ι? π^ίρατα yaίηs^ 
 και τοι μίν ναίονσιν ακηδία θνμον €\οντ€ζ 
 €V μακάρων νήσονατι, παρ' 'ί2κ€αν5ν βαθνδίνην, 
 όλβιοι ηρω€<ζ' τοΐσιν /χελιτ/δεα καρπόν 
 Tpls €T€o<s θάλλοντα φίρ^ι ζ^ίδωρο^ αρονρα.^ 
 
 The fifth age is the present — that of the Men of Iron.^ 
 No one who reads the Gratylus, 397 d if., where the 
 
 1 α e< Z>. 97 if. • 2 0. et D. 126. 
 
 3 Psyche, i. 99-102. * 0. et D. 137 ff. 
 
 δ 0. et D. 150 if. β 0. et D. 157 if. 
 
436 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 etymology of Βαίμονβς is discussed and Hesiod's verses about 
 the Βαίμονβς βτηγβόνίου are quoted, and the Laws, iv. 713, 
 and Politicus, 272, where the Myth of the Golden Age of 
 Cronus, when Βαίμονβ^ζ ruled over men," is told, can fail to see 
 that the Hesiodic account of Βαίμονες has a great hold on 
 Plato's imagination ; and it may be that even the φύΧακες of 
 the Republic — men with gold in their nature (as the βττίκονροί 
 have silver, and the artisans and husbandmen have copper 
 and iron) — are somehow, in Plato's imagination, parallel to 
 Hesiod's φύλακες θνητών ανθρωττων, the spirits of the men 
 of the Golden Age} But we must not forget that there is a 
 difference between Plato's Βαίμονες of the Laws and Politicus 
 and of Diotima's Discourse, and Hesiod's Βαίμονες, which is 
 greater than the obvious resemblance. Hesiod's Βαίμονες 
 ετΓίγθόνίοί are the spirits of deceased men — as are Pindar's 
 ήρωες ayvoL (Meno, 81 c) ; but the Βαίμονες of the Laws 
 and Politicus, who rule over men in the Golden Age, are not 
 spirits of deceased men, but beings of an entirely different 
 order — Gods, who were created Gods, to whom provinces on 
 Earth were assigned by the Supreme God — ol κατά τους 
 τοτΓονς συνάργοντες τω μεηίστω Βαίμονι θεοί, as they are 
 described in Po^^^zczis, 272 Ε ; and in Diotima's Discourse το 
 Βαιμόνων, headed by Eros, is clearly set forth as an order of 
 divine beings essentially superhuman, not spirits of deceased 
 men. They are, I take it, of the same rank as, indeed prob- 
 ably identical with, the ^εννητοί θεοί of the Timaeus — 
 created before men, to be managers of human affairs on behalf 
 of the Supreme God.^ In Eep. v. 468 E, on the other hand, 
 
 ^ This parallel is suggested by Mr. Adam in a note on Republic, 468 e, and 
 worked out by Mr. F. M. Cornford in an interesting article on "Plato and 
 Orpheus" in The Classical Review, December 1903. 
 
 2 Chalcidius, in his Commentary on the Timaeus, is at pains to show (cap. 
 cxxxv.) that the Platonic δαίμονες and the Souls of deceased men are two dis- 
 tinct orders : — "Plerique tamen ex Platonis magisterio, daemorias putant aiiimas 
 corporeo munere liberatas : laudabilium quoque virorum aethcreos daemonas, 
 improborum vero nocentes, easdemque animas anno demum millesimo terrenum 
 corpus resumere. Empedoclesque non aliter longaevos daemonas fieri has animas 
 putat. Pythagoras etiam in suis aureis versibus : 
 
 Corpore deposito cum liber aethera perges, 
 Evades hominem factus deus aetheris almi. 
 
 Quibus Plato consentire rainime videtur, cum in Politia tyranni animam facit 
 excruciari post mortem ab ultoribus, ex quo apparet aliam esse animaru, alium 
 daemonem : siquidem quod cruciatur et item quod cruciat diversa necesse sit. 
 Quodque opifex Deus ante daemonas instituit quam nostras animas creavit ; 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 437 
 
 Plato's use of the term Βαίμονβς is strictly Hesiodic — he is 
 speaking not of such Gods at all, but of the spirits of deceased 
 men of the Golden Class. As Mr. Adam, in his note on the 
 passage, says, " Plato compares his ' golden citizens ' with the 
 heroes of the Hesiodic golden age. He would fain surround 
 them with some of the romantic and religious sentiment 
 that clung around the golden age of Greek poetry and 
 legend." 
 
 The two doctrines of Βαίμονβς which we find in Plato — 
 that enunciated in the Golden Age Myth and Diotima's 
 Discourse, and that adopted from Hesiod in Hep. v. 468 Ε — 
 were both taken over by the Stoics, and accommodated to the 
 tenets of their " physical science." 
 
 According to the Stoics, the Soul, ψυχή, is material, 
 σωματική, but its matter is rarer and finer (άραιότβρορ and 
 \€7Γτομ€ρ6στ€ρον — Chrysippus apud Plutarch de Stoic. Repugn. 
 41) than that of the body. The Soul is, in fact, ττνβυμα 
 βνθβρμον, " hot air, or breath." ^ 
 
 When Souls leave their earthly bodies they do not immedi- 
 ately perish. According to Cleanthes, they all retain their 
 individuality until the Conflagration, μ^γ^ρι της έκττνρώσβως : 
 according to Chrysippus, only the Souls of Wise Men.^ At 
 the Conflagration, however, all Souls perish as individuals — 
 are dissolved back into the one substance, the elemental fire, 
 God, whose άττοσιτάσματα, or sundered parts, they were during 
 the term of their individual existence. 
 
 When Souls leave their earthly bodies, they rise into the 
 Air which occupies the space between the Earth and the Moon, 
 τον ντΓο σεΚήνην τόττον.^ That the dissolution of, at any 
 rate, the majority of Souls inhabiting this aerial space takes 
 place before the Conflagration is clearly the view of Marcus 
 Aurelius in a curious passage (Comment, iv. 21), in which he 
 meets the difficulty of the Air having room for so many 
 separate beings. Eoom, he says, is always being made in the 
 
 quodque has indigere auxilio daemonum, his voluerit illos praebere tutelam. 
 Quasdam tamen animas, quae vitara eximie per trinam incorporationem egerint, 
 virtutis m<'rito aereis, vel etiam aethereis, plagis consecrari putat, a necessitate 
 incorporationis immunes." The whole passage relating to Daemons in the Com- 
 mentary of Clialcidius (cxxvi. -cxxxv.) is interesting. He compares the Daemons 
 of Plato with the angels of the ifebrews. 
 
 ^ Diog. Laert. vii. 157. ^ o.c. vii. 157. 
 
 ' Posidonius, in Sext. Phys. i. 73. 
 
438 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Air for new-comers by the progressive dissolution of their 
 predecessors, just as room in the Earth is always made for 
 new bodies by the progressive dissolution of those earlier 
 buried : — ei Βίαμβνουσιν al ψυχαί, ττώς αντας βξ ά'ώίου 
 γωρβΐ 6 άηρ ; 7Γω9 δε η yij 'χωρεί τα των €κ τοσούτου 
 αΙώνος θατττομβνων σώματα; ώσττβρ yap ivOdSe ή τούτων 
 7Γ/?09 ηντινα βΤΓίΒίαμονην μβταβοΧη καϊ ΒίάΧυσίς χωράν 
 άΧλοις νεκροΐς ττοίβΐ, όντως αϊ et? τον akpa μβθιστάμεναυ 
 'sjrvyai, €7γΙ ττοσον συμμβίνασαι, μβταβάΧΧουσι καν χεονται 
 καϊ βξάΐΓτονταί, eU τον των οΧων σττβρματίκον \oyov 
 άναΧαμβανόμβναί, καϊ τούτον τον τρόττον χώραν ταΐ<; 
 ττροσσννοίκίζομεναίς τΓαρίχουσιν. 
 
 It is probably to the Stoic Posidonius, whose astronomy 
 has been mentioned as influential in the development of the 
 theory and practice of Mithras-worship and similar sacra- 
 mental cults,^ that the idea of the Air as the habitat of the 
 Souls of the deceased and also of Βαίμονβ^; — an order of 
 beings distinct from that of human Souls — is chiefly indebted 
 for its vogue. Posidonius wrote a treatise ττβρί ηρώων καϊ 
 Βαψόνων, quoted by Macrobius (Sat i. 23),^ and Cicero (de 
 Div. i. 64) quotes him as saying that the Air is full of Souls 
 and Daemons.^ That belief in Daemons — spirits which have 
 never been incarnate in human bodies — is as consistent with 
 the " materialism " of the Stoics as belief in the continued 
 existence of human Souls in the Air, is insisted upon by 
 Zeller,^ and, indeed, is obvious. 
 
 So much for Stoical belief. But it was exactly the 
 astronomy — Pythagorean and Platonic in its origin — 
 popularised by the Stoic Posidonius, which seems to have 
 suggested a mode of escape from the Stoical doctrine that 
 the Soul, though subsisting for a longer or shorter time 
 after the death of the body, yet is ultimately dissolved. 
 Above the Air — the Stoical habitat of Βαίμονες and Souls 
 of deceased men, equally doomed to dissolution, according 
 to the orthodox doctrine of the school — there is the 
 Aether.* Into this region Souls purified by Philosophy — 
 
 1 See supra, pp. 352 if, 
 
 2 See Rohde, Ps7jche, ii. 320. 
 
 2 Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, p. 333, Engl. Transl. 
 
 * I use the term "aether" here in its proper sense, as the name of the 
 element which contains the ' ' visible gods," the stars. This element is sometimes, 
 as in the Epinomis, 984 (cf. Zeller, Plato, p. 615), called irvp, fire, while "aether" 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 439 
 
 or, it may be, by sacramental observances — rise, and there, 
 though united to God, retain their individuality for ever. 
 This is the doctrine of the Somnium Scipionis — which 
 probably owes its astronomy to Posidonius ^ — and of the 
 Tusc. Lisp. (i. 17, 18, 19); it is the doctrine to which even 
 the Stoic Seneca {ad Marc. 25. 1) seems to incline, and it 
 inspired those sacramental cults, Orphic, Mithraic, and 
 Egyptian, which became so important in the religious life 
 of the first two centuries of the Christian era.^ 
 
 In this doctrine of Aether, the region of the heavenly 
 spheres, as everlasting home of purified Souls, we have, of 
 course, merely the mythology of the Timaeus and Phaedrus 
 framed in an astronomical setting somewhat more definite 
 than that furnished by Plato himself. What it is important, 
 however, to recognise is that this mythology, so framed, 
 
 takes the place of what is properly called irvp, fire, in the list "fire, air, water, earth." 
 Bywater \journ. of Phil. vol. i. pp. 37-39, on the Fragm. of Philolaus) quotes 
 the de Coelo, i. 270 b, and the i)ieteor. 339 b, for "aether" above the four 
 elements, and remarks that "the occurrence of this quinta essentia in the 
 Platonic Epinomis is one of the many indications of the late origin of that 
 Dialogue." 
 
 ^ See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 320, and Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, quoted supra, 
 p. 352. 
 
 ^ The following references to the Commentary of Hierocles (President of the 
 School of Alexandria) on the Golden Hymn of the Pythagoreans may be taken 
 to show how the astronomy of the Timaeus and Pha&dms influenced eschatology 
 even in the fifth century of the Christian era. Hierocles (see Mullach's 
 Fragm. Phil. Graec. i. 478 fi'. ) is commenting on the lines — 
 
 αλλ' etpyov βρωτων, ών εΐττομβν, ^v re καθαρμοΐί, 
 ^v T€ λιάσει ψνχψ κρίνων, καΐ φράζεν 'έκαστα, 
 ■ηνίοχον "γνώμην arrjaas καθύττερθεν άρίστην, 
 
 and, after referring for ηνίοχον to the Phaedrus Myth, and remarking that it 
 embodies Pythagorean doctrine, says that, for the purification of the aethereal 
 body — Trpos την κάθαρσιν του at>yoei5oi/s ήμων σώματος — we must put away the 
 filth of the terrestrial body, and submit ourselves to purificatory observances, 
 καθαρμοί, which he describes — by means of which we shall rise from the Place of 
 Generation and Corruption, and be translat^-d to τό -ηΚύσων ττεδίον καΐ Αιθέρα 
 τόν έλβύθερον. But as the terrestrial body must be shed on Earth, the συμφυές, 
 i.e. the aerial body, must be shed in the aerial region immediately under the 
 Moon (cf. Plut. de fac. in orbe lunae, 28, quoted p. 440 infra). Then the 
 aethereal or astral body (τό άστρο€ΐδέ$, αύΎ0€ΐδέ$, φωτανόν σώμα or ^χημα) which 
 is the immortal vehicle of the Soul, is free to ascend, with the Soul, into the 
 Aether : — τούτο δέ 'γ€ν6μ6νο3 ώ$ οΐόν τβ μ€τά. τ^ν κάθαρσιν, δ άεί βίσιν οΐ μ^ els 
 Ύένβσιν ττίπτειν τΓ€φνκύτ€$, rots μέν Ύνώσεσιν ένουται τφ τταντί, καΐ trpbs αυτόν 
 avayeraL τόν θ€Ον • σώμα δέ συμφυέ$ ^χων, τόττον δβιται els κατάταξιν άστροειδη, 
 οίον θέσιν ξητΟιν. ττρέτΓΟί δ' άν τφ τοωύτφ σώματι tottos 6 υπό σ€λΎ]νην 
 '7Γpoσeχωs, ώϊ υπερέχων μέν των φθαρτών σωμάτων, ύπoβeβηκώs δέ των ουρανίων, 
 iv αΙθέρα ελεύθερον οί αυθα-γ^ρειοι καλοΰσιν αιθέρα μέν, ώs άϋΧον καΐ άΐδιον 
 σώμα- ελεύθερον δέ, ώ5 υλικών παθημάτων καθαρόν. τι οΰν 6 έκεΐσε έλθών ^σται, 
 ^ τούτο 6 φησιν, #σσεαι a0avaTos θeόs, ώμoιωμέvos rois iv άρχ^ των έπων 
 λεχθεΐσιν Mavarois 0eo2s, ού φύσει aOavaros θεbs. 
 
440 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 appeared to Platonists to be a sufficiently " up-to-date " 
 refutation of the " materialism " of the Stoics. The Soul, 
 when perfectly purified, rises out of the Air into the Aether, 
 returning to its original home, and there lives for ever and 
 ever. Its perfect purification — effected by Philosophy, or 
 ritual performances, or both — guarantees its immortality ; for 
 its eternal intelligible essence — vov^ — stripped of perishing 
 sensible vehicles, terrestrial — σώμα — and aerial — "^υχη — 
 is alone left. Of this intelligible essence Aether is the 
 vehicle. The aethereal region is full of f vigor mvi e vincenti "^ 
 — immortal spirits made pure by Philosophy, and suffering, 
 and holy rites. This Platonist doctrine is set forth by 
 Plutarch in his de genio Socratis, and in his de facie in 
 orhe lunae. In a curious passage in the latter work (ch. 28) 
 he tells us that reason — νους — has its home in the Sun. 
 Thither the purified spirit returns, having shed its corporeal 
 vehicle — σώμα — on Earth, and its aerial — ψυχή — on the 
 Moon. This is the order of purification. And the order of 
 generation, he explains, is the contrary of that of purification : 
 — Of the three parts which make up man, the Sun supplies 
 νους, the Moon ψυχή, the Earth σώμα.^ Death on Earth 
 makes the three two ; death on the Moon makes the two 
 one. Every Soul, whether rational or irrational,^ must 
 wander for a time in the region between the Earth and the 
 Moon. In the lower parts of this region the unrighteous 
 are punished and corrected, while the righteous tarry for an 
 appointed time in its highest parts — in the region of the 
 softest air, which is called the Meadow of Death — iv τω 
 Ίτραοτάτω του άβρος ον Χειμώνας αΒου καΧουσι ; * then, 
 being filled, like those initiated, with a strange joy, half 
 amazement half hope, they aspire to the Moon. There, now 
 styled Βαίμονβζ by Plutarch,^ they have their abode, 
 descending sometimes to Earth to help men — to assist at 
 mysteries, to watch and punish crimes, to save in battle 
 and at sea. The good among them (for some of them are 
 wicked and become incarnate again in human bodies) are 
 the Souls of those who lived on Earth in the reign of Cronus, 
 and they are still worshipped in many places. When one 
 
 1 Par. X. 64. 2 pj^t. de/ac. in orb. lun. 28. 
 
 3 o.c. 28. 4 o.c. 28. 5 o.c. 30. 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 441 
 
 of these good Daemons at last loses his power on Earth and 
 fails his worshippers, it is because his lunar death has taken 
 place — his true Self, i/ou?, has at last been separated from 
 the ψνχη, which remains, like a corpse, on the Moon. The 
 separation of νους from ψυχή is effected by the operation 
 in him of Love of the Solar Image — άττοκρίνβταν δ' βρωτν 
 της 7Γ€ρΙ τον ηΚίον βίκονος, Βί" ης έττίΚάμττβί το βφβτον 
 καΐ καΧον καΐ θβίον καΐ μακάριον, ου ττασα φύσνς, άΧΚη 
 δ* αΧΧως, opeyeTai , . . Χβίττβταί δε ή 'ψ•ν'χΎ}ς φύσις εττΐ 
 Trj aeKrjvrj, οίον ϊ'χνη Τίνα βίου και ονβίρατα Βιαφϋλάττονσα 
 . . αύτος βκαστος ημών ου θυμός έστιν, ούΒβ φόβος, ουδ' 
 βίΓίθυμία, καθάττβρ ούΒε σάρκες, ούΒβ ύypότητ€ς, αλλ,' ω 
 Βιανοούμβθα καΐ φρονοΰμβν . . . τούτων δε ή σεΚηνη 
 στοΐ'χείόν εστίν, αναλύονται yap εΙς ταύτην, ωσττερ εις 
 την yrjv τα σώματα των νεκρών, 
 
 Plutarch's other work, mentioned above, the de genio 
 Socratis, is so important for the doctrine of Daemons, that 
 it cannot be dismissed in a paragraph like that just devoted 
 to the de facie in orhe lunae. On the whole, I think the 
 best way of laying its contents before the reader is to let it 
 speak for itself in the Myth of Timarchus, which indeed 
 presents all that is essential to Plutarch's daemonology. As 
 in the case of the Aridaeus-Thespesius Myth, I avail myself 
 here again of Philemon Holland's version. 
 
 There was one Timarchus of Chaeronea, who died very young, 
 and requested earnestly of Socrates to be buried near unto 
 Lamprocles, Socrates his son, who departed this life but few days 
 before, being a dear friend of his, and of the same age. Now 
 this young gentleman, being very desirous (as he was of a 
 generous disposition, and had newly tasted the sweetness of 
 Philosophy) to know what was the nature and power of Socrates' 
 familiar spirit, when he had imparted his mind and purpose 
 unto me only and Cebes, went down into the cave or vault of 
 Trophonius, after the usual sacrifices and accustomed compli- 
 ments due to that oracle performed : where, having remained two 
 nights and one day, inasmuch as many men were out of all hope 
 that he ever would come forth again — yea, and his kinsfolk and 
 friends bewailed the loss of him — one morning betimes issued 
 forth very glad and jocund. ... He recounted unto us many 
 wonders strange to be hgard and seen : for he said that being 
 descended into the place of the oracle, he first met with much 
 darkness, and afterwards, when he had made his prayers, he lay 
 
442 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 a long time upon the ground, not knowing whether he was awake 
 or dreamed. Howbeit, he thought that he heard a noise which 
 lit upon his head and smote it, whereby the sutures or seams 
 thereof were disjoined and opened, by which he yielded forth 
 his soul ; which, being thus separate, was very joyous, seeing 
 itself mingled with a transparent and pure air. . . When he 
 looked behind him he could see the Earth no more, but the Isles 
 all bright and illuminate with a mild and delicate fire, and those 
 exchanged their places one with another, and withal, received 
 sundry colours, as it were diverse tinctures, according as in that 
 variety of change the light did alter ; and they all seemed unto 
 him in number infinite and in quantity excessive : and albeit they 
 were not of equal pourprise and extent, yet round they were 
 all alike : also, by their motion, which was circular, the sky 
 resounded. . . Amid these Islands there seemed a sea or great 
 lake diffused and spread, shining with diverse mixed colours upon 
 a ground of grey or light blue. Moreover, of these Isles some 
 few sailed, as one would say, and were carried a direct course 
 down the water beyond the current; but others, and those in 
 number many, went aside out of the channel, and were Avith 
 such a violence drawn back that they seemed to be swallowed 
 under the waves. . . . And the same sea hath two mouths or 
 entrances, whereby it recciveth two rivers of fire breaking 
 into it, opposite one to the other, in such sort as the blueness 
 thereof became whitish by reason that the greatest part was 
 repelled and driven back. And these things he said he beheld 
 with great delight. But when he came to look downward, he- 
 perceived a mighty huge hole or gulf all round, in manner of a 
 hollow globe cut through the midst, exceeding deep and horrible 
 to see to, full of much darkness, and the same not quiet and still, 
 but turbulent and oftentimes boiling and walming upward, out 
 of which there might be heard innumerable roarings and groanings 
 of beasts, cries and wrawlings of an infinite number of children, 
 with sundry plaints and lamentations of men and women together, 
 besides many noises, tumults, clamours, and outcries of all sorts, 
 and those not clear, but dull and dead, as being sent up from a 
 great depth underneath. . . . One whom he saw not, said unto 
 him : The division of Proserpina, you may see if you will, 
 how it is bounded with Styx. Styx (quoth he) is the way 
 which leadeth unto hell and the kingdom of Pluto, dividing two 
 contrary natures of light and darkness with the head and top 
 thereof ; for, as you see, it beginneth from the bottom of hell 
 beneath, which it touches with the one extremity, and reacheth 
 with the other to the light all about, and so limiteth the utmost 
 part of the whole world, divided into four regiments. The first 
 is that of life ; the second of moving ; the third of generation ; 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 443 
 
 and the fourth of corruption. The first is coupled to the second 
 by unity, in that which is not visible ; the second to the third, 
 by the mind or intelligence, in the sun ; the third to the fourth, 
 by nature, in the moon. And of every one of these copulations 
 there is a Friend, or Destiny, the Daughter of Necessity, that 
 keepeth the key. Of the first, she that is named Atropos, as one 
 would say Inflexible ; of the second, Clotho — that is to say, the 
 Spinster ; of the third in the moon, Lachesis — that is to say. Lot, 
 about which is the bending of geniture or nativity. As for all 
 the other Isles, they have gods within them ; but the Moon, 
 appertaining to the terrestrial Daemons, avoideth the confines of 
 Styx, as being somewhat higher exalted, approaching once only 
 in an hundred seventy seven second measures : and upon the 
 approach of this precinct of Styx, the souls cry out for fear. And 
 why ? Hell catcheth and swalloweth many of them, as they 
 glide and slip about it : and others the Moon receiveth and taketh 
 up, swimming from beneath unto her; such, I mean, as upon 
 whom the end of generation fell in good and opportune time, all 
 save those which are impure and polluted : for them, with her 
 fearful flashing and hideous roaring, she sufi'ereth not to come 
 near unto her ; who, seeing that they have missed of their intent, 
 bewail their woeful state, and be carried down again, as you see, 
 to another generation and nativity. Why, quoth Timarchus, I 
 see nothing but a number of stars leaping up and down about 
 this huge and deep gulf, some drowned and swallowed up in it, 
 others appearing again from below. These be (quoth he) the 
 daemons that you see, though you know them not. And mark, 
 withal, how this comes about. Every soul is endued with a 
 portion of mind or understanding : but look how much thereof 
 is mingled with flesh and with passions ; being altered with 
 pleasures and dolors, it becometh unreasonable. But every soul 
 is not mixed after one sort ... for some are wholly plunged 
 within the body . . . others partly are mingled with the flesh, 
 and in part leave out that which is most pure, and not drawn 
 downward by the contagion of the gross part, but remaineth 
 swimming and floating as it were aloft, touching the top or crown 
 only of a man's head, and is in manner of a cord hanging up 
 aloft, just over the soul which is directly and plumb under, to 
 uphold and raise it up, so far forth as it is obeisant thereto, and 
 not over-ruled and swayed with passions and perturbations : for 
 that which is plunged down within the body is called the soul ; 
 but that which is entire and uncorrupt the vulgar sort calleth the 
 understanding, supposing it to be within them as in mirrors that 
 which appeareth by way of reflection : but those that judge aright 
 and according to the trtlth name it Daemon, as being clean 
 without them. These stars, then, which you see as if they were 
 
444 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 extinct and put out, imagine and take them to be the souls which 
 are totally drowned within bodies ; and such as seem to shine out 
 again and to return lightsome from beneath, shaking from them 
 a certain dark and foggy mist, esteem the same to be such souls 
 as after death are retired and escaped out of the bodies ; but 
 those which are mounted on high and move to and fro in one 
 uniform course throughout are the Daemons or spirits of men who 
 are said to have intelligence and understanding. Endeavour now 
 therefore and strain yourself to see the connection of each one, 
 whereby it is linked and united to the soul. When I heard this 
 I began to take more heed, and might see stars leaping and 
 floating upon the water, some more, some less, like as we observe 
 pieces of cork shewing in the sea where the fishers' nets have been 
 cast ; and some of them turned in manner of spindles or bobbins, 
 as folk spin or twist therewith, yet drawing a troubled and 
 unequal course and not able to direct and compose the motion 
 straight. And the voice said that those which held on a right 
 course and orderly motion were they whose souls were obeisant 
 to the reins of reason . . . but they that eftsoons rise and fall up 
 and down unequally and disorderly are those which strive against 
 the yoke. ... Of such as are obedient at the first, and presently 
 from their very nativity hearken unto their proper Daemon, are 
 all of the kind of prophets and diviners who have the gift to 
 foretell things to come, likewise holy and devout men : of which 
 number you have heard how the soul of Hermodorus the Clazo- 
 menian was wont to abandon his body quite, and both by day and 
 night to wander into many places ; and afterwards to return into 
 it again . . . which it used so long, until his enemies, by the 
 treachery of his wife, surprised his body one time, when the soul 
 was gone out of it, and burnt it in his house. Howbeit, this was 
 not true ; for his soul never departed out of his body ; but the 
 same being always obedient unto his Daemon, and slacking the 
 bond unto it, gave it means and liberty to run up and down, and 
 to walk to and fro in many places, in such sort, as having seen 
 and heard many things abroad, it would come and report the 
 same unto him. But those that consumed his body as he lay 
 asleep are tormented in Tartarus even at this day for it ; which 
 you shall know yourself, good young man, more certainly within 
 these three months (quoth that voice) : and for this time see you 
 depart. When this voice had made an end of speaking, Timarchus, 
 as he told the tale himself, turned about to see who it was that 
 spake; but feeling a great pain again in his head, as if it had 
 been violently pressed and crushed, he was deprived of all sense 
 and understanding, and neither knew himself nor anything about 
 him. But within a while after when he was come unto himself, 
 he might see how he lay along at the entry of the foresaid cave 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 445 
 
 of Trophonius, like as he had himself at the beginning. And thus 
 much concerning the fable of Timarchus ; who being returned to 
 Athens, in the third month after, just as the voice foretold him, 
 he departed this life. 
 
 The Aether, then, according to the Platonist belief which 
 we are examining, is the birthplace of human Souls, and 
 their final abode when they have completed the purification 
 which guarantees immortality to them as Pure Intelligences. 
 But the Air is, none the less, the habitat, and, it would appear, 
 the permanent habitat, of another class of immortal spirits, 
 Βαίμονβς, who never were incarnate in terrestrial bodies. 
 These immortal Βαίμονβ^ occupy the Air, that they may be 
 near to help men on Earth, and mediate between them and 
 God, whose dwelling is in the aethereal region. It is in this 
 interspace between the "visible Gods," the Stars, and the 
 Earth that the author of the Epinomis^ places the Βαίμονες, 
 whom he describes as interpreters between men and the 
 Gods. He distinguishes three classes of such Βαίμονες: 
 first, those who live in the so-called Aether under the Fire 
 or true Aether, i.e. in the higher part of the space between 
 the Earth and the Moon ; secondly, those who inhabit the Air 
 round the Earth — these two kinds of Daemons are invisible ; 
 thirdly. Daemons whose vehicle is watery mist — these are 
 sometimes visible.^ 
 
 It is in the same space between the Earth and the Moon 
 that the Platonist Apuleius, writing in the second century 
 after Christ, places the Βαίμονβς of Diotima's Discourse, an 
 order of divine mediators between God and men to which 
 he conceives the Βαιμόνιον of Socrates and the Guardian 
 Angels of all other men as belonging. 
 
 Atque (he says)^ si Platonis vera sententia est, nunquam se 
 Deum cum homine communicare, facilius me audierit lapis, quam 
 Jupiter. Non usque adeo (responderit enim Plato pro sententia 
 sua, mea vice), non usque adeo, inquit, sejunctos et alienatos a 
 nobis deos praedico, ut ne vota quidem nostra ad illos arbitrer 
 pervenire. Neque enim ipsos cura rerum humanarum, sed 
 contrectatione sola removi. Caeterum sunt quaedam divinae 
 
 * AccordiniT to Zeller {Plato, p. 561, Engl. Transl.), probably Philippus of 
 Opus, one of Plato's pupils. • 
 
 2 Epinomis, 984, 985 ; cf. Zeller, Plato (Engl. Transl.), p. 615. 
 ' Apuleius de Deo SocrcUis, vol. ii. p. 116, ed. Botolaud. 
 
446 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 mediae potestates, inter summum aethera et infimas terras, in 
 isto intersitae aeris spatio, per quas et desideria nostra et merita 
 ad deos commeant; hos Graeci nomine δαίμονας nuncupaut. 
 Inter terricolas caelicolasque vectores, hinc precum, inde donorum ; 
 qui ultro citro portant, hinc petitionee, inde suppetias, ceu 
 qoidam utriusque interpret es et salutigerL Per hos eosdem, 
 ut Plato in Symposio autumat, cuncta deniinciata, et magorum 
 varia miracula, omnesque praesagiorum species reguntur. Eorum 
 quippe de numero praediti curant singula, proinde ut est eorum 
 cuique tributa provincia : vel somniis confirmandis, vel extis 
 fissiculandis, vel praepetibus gubemandis, vel oscinibus erudiendis, 
 vel vatibus inspirandis, vel fulminibus jaculandis, vel nubibus 
 coruscandis, caeterisque adeo, per quae futura dinoscimus. Quae 
 cuncta caelestium voluntate et numine et auctoritate, sed 
 daemonum obsequio et opera et ministerio fieri arbitrandum 
 eat . . . Quid igitur^ tanta vis aeris, quae ab humillimia lunae 
 anfractibus, usque ad summum Olympi verticem interjacet t 
 Quid tandem 1 Yacabitne animalibus suis, atque erit ista naturae 
 pars mortua ac debilis t . . . Flagitat ratio * debere propria enim 
 animalia in aere intelligi ; superest ut quae tandem et cujusmodi 
 ea sint, disseramus. Igitur terrena nequaquam, devergant enim 
 pondere; sed ne flammida, ne sursum versus calore rapiantur. 
 Temperanda ergo nobis pro loci medietate media natura. . . . 
 mente formemus et gignamus animo id genus corporum texta, 
 quae neque tarn bruta quam terrea, neque tam levia quam 
 aetherea, sed quodammodo utrimque sejugata. . . . Quod si 
 nubes' sublime volitant, quibus omnia et exortus est terrenus, 
 et retro defluxus in terras est ; quid tandem censes daemonum 
 corpora, quae sunt concretu multo tan to subtiliori 1 Non enim 
 sunt ex hac faeculenta nubecula, tumida caligine conglobata, 
 sicuti nubium genus est; sed ex illo purissimo aeris liquido et 
 sereno elemento coalita, eoque nemini hominum temere visibilia, 
 nisi divinitus speciem sui offerant, quod nulla in illis terrena 
 soliditas locum luminis occuparit, quae nostris oculis possit 
 obsistere, qua soliditate necessario offensa acies immoretur; sed 
 fila corporum possident rara, et splendida, et tenuia, usque adeo 
 ut radios omnis nostri tuoris et raritate transmittant, et splendore 
 reverberent, et subtilitate frustrentur. . . . Debet deus * nuUam 
 perpeti vel odii, vel amoris temporalem perfunctionem : et idcirco 
 nee indignatione nee misericordia contingi, nullo angore contrahi, 
 nulla alacritate gestire ; sed ab omnibus animi passionibus liber, 
 nee dolere unquam, nee aliquando laetari, nee aliquid repentinum 
 velle vel nolle. Sed et haec cuncta, et id genus caetera, daemonum 
 mediocritati rit« congruunt. Sunt enim inter nos ac deos, ut loco 
 regionis, ita ingenio mentis intersiti, habentes communem cum 
 
 1 o.e. p. 119. * o.e. p. 119. » o.e. p. 121. * o.e, p. 124. 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 447 
 
 superis immortalitatem, cum inferis passioDem. Nam, proinde ut 
 nos, pati possunt omnia animorum placamenta vel incitamenta : 
 ut et ira incitentur, et misericordia flectantur, et donis invitentur, 
 et precibus leniantur, et contumeliis exasperentur, et honoribus 
 mulceantur, aliisque omnibus ad similem nobis modum varientur. 
 Quippe, ut finem comprehendam, d<iemones sunt genere animalia, 
 ingenio rationaMLia, animo passivaf corpore aeria, tempore aetema. 
 
 These Daemons Apuleius distinguishes sharply/ as never 
 having been incarnate, jfrom the lower sort of Daemons — 
 Lemures, Lares, Larvae — spirits of deceased men. It is from 
 the number of the Daemons who never were incarnate that 
 the Guardian Spirit attached to each man at his birth comes. 
 
 £x hac sublimiori^ daemonum copia Plato autumat, singulis 
 hominibus in vita agenda testes et custodes singulos additos, qui 
 nemini conspicui, semper adsint arbitri omnium non modo 
 actorum, verum etiam cogitatorum. At ubi vita edita remean- 
 dum est, eundem ilium, qui nobis praeditus fuit, raptare iUico et 
 trahere veluti custodiam suam ad judicium, atque illic in causa 
 dicunda assistere : si qua commentiatur, redarguere : si qua vera 
 dicat, asseverare : prorsus illius testimonio ferri sententiam. 
 Proinde vos onmes, qui banc Platonis divinam sententiam, me 
 interprete, auscultatis, ita animos vestros ad quaecimque vel 
 agenda, vel meditanda formate, ut sciatis, nihil homini prae istis 
 custodibus, nee intra animum, nee foris, esse secreti, quin omnia 
 curiose ille participet, omnia visat, omnia inteUigat, in ipsis 
 peniiissimis menitbus vice eonsderUiae deversetur} 
 
 Maxim us Tyxius, writing about the same time as Apuleius, 
 
 1 ox. p. 128. * a.c p. 129. 
 
 ' ''To a mind carefully formed upon the basis of its natural conscience," 
 says Cardinal Newman (Grammar of Assent^ ch. v.), "the world, both of natui*e 
 and of man, does but give back a reflection of those truths about the One Living 
 God which have been familiar to it from childhood. Good and evil meet us 
 daily as we pass through life, and there are those who thiuk it philosophical 
 to act towards the manifestations of each with some sort of impartiality, as if 
 evil had as much right to be there as good, or even better, as having more 
 striking triumphs and a broader jurisdiction. And because the course of things 
 is determined by fixed laws, they consider that those laws preclude the present 
 agency of the Creator in the carrying out of particular issues. It is otherwise 
 with the theology of the religious imagination. It has a living hold on truths 
 which are really to be found in the world, though they are not upon the surface. 
 It is able to pronounce by anticipation, what it takes a long argument to prove 
 — that good is the rule, and evil the exception. It is able to assume that, 
 uniform as are the laws of nature, they are consistent with a particular 
 Providence. It interprets what it sees around it by this previous inward 
 teaching, as the true k^ of that maze of vast complicated disorder ; and thus 
 it gains a more and more consistent and luminous Vision of God from the most 
 unpromising materials. Thus conscience is a connecting principle between the 
 creature and his Creator ; andThe firmest bold of theological truths is gained by 
 habits of personal religion." 
 
448 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 has remarks to the same effect in his Dissertation (26) on 
 the δαιμόνων of Socrates, which he describes as one of those 
 αθάνατοι Bevrepoi who are posted between Gods and Men, in 
 the space between Earth and Heaven — iv μβθορίω ^ης καϊ 
 ουρανού reray^evoL — to be ministers of the Gods and 
 guardians, ίτηστάται, of men. The number of these medi- 
 ators between Gods and Men is countless : he quotes Hesiod — 
 
 T/3t9 yap μ,νριοι ela-lv kirl γθονϊ τΓονΧνβοτ^ίρ^ 
 αθάνατοι Ζηνο'ζ πρόττολου ^ — 
 
 Some of them heal our diseases, others give counsel in 
 difficulties, others reveal things hidden, others help men at 
 their work or attend them on their journeys ; some are with 
 men in the town, others with men in the country ; some are 
 near to give aid at sea, others on land ; one is at home in 
 Socrates, another in Plato, another in Pythagoras — €Ϊληχ^6 
 δ' αΧ\ο<ί αΧλην βστίαν σώματο^ζ, 6 μεν %ωκράτην, 6 Se 
 ΤΙΧάτωνα . . . οσαι φύσεις άνΒρών τοσαυταο καϊ Βαιμόνων : 
 and the unrighteous Soul is that which has no Guardian 
 Daemon domestic within it — eav Be irov μογθηραν Βείξτ^ς 
 ψνχ^ην, άνεστίος αντη καϊ άνετηστάτητος? 
 
 The doctrine of the individual's Guardian Daemon, set 
 forth in the Phaedo Myth and the Myth of Er, and corrobo- 
 rated from the personal experience of Socrates in the Apology^ 
 RejpuUicy^ and Theages,^ seems, in the works of Apuleius and 
 Maximus Tyrius just now quoted from, to amount very nearly 
 to the identification of that Daemon with Moral Character 
 or Conscience — an identification which, it is interesting to re- 
 member, was made even before Plato's time by Heraclitus, — ήθος 
 άνθρώττω Βαίμων,^ — and meets us in the teaching of the Stoics, 
 where, indeed, it seems to be only the legitimate consequence 
 of the " naturalism " of the School, and does not surprise us, as 
 it does in the teaching of Platonists : the following passage, for 
 instance, in Arrian's Dissertationes (i. 14), giving the words of 
 Epictetus, merely states the doctrine known to moral theology 
 as that of the " authority of conscience " : — 
 
 1 0. et Ώ. 235. 
 
 2 This seems to have been the generally accepted view ; but Servius on Virg. 
 Aen. vi. 743, records another view — that every man at birth has assigned to him 
 two genii, a good and a bad. 
 
 3 40 A. * 496 c. 5 128 d ff. 
 ^ Heracliti Eph. Reliquiae, Bywater, Fr. cxxi. 
 
THE TWO SYMPOSIUM MYTHS 449 
 
 eiTLTpoTTOv €κάστω τταρ^στησίν 6 Zei;? τον Ικάστου δαίμονα, και 
 παρέδωκε φνλάσσ€ΐν αΰτον αΰτφ, και τούτον άκοίμητον καϊ άπαρα- 
 λόγισ-τον. τίνι yap άλλφ κρ^ίττονι καΐ eTrt/AcAeaTC/oy φνλακι 
 τταραδίδωκζν -ημών ίκαστον ; ωσθ' όταν κλζίοτητζ τά§ dvpas και 
 σκότον έ'νδον ττοί-ήσητζ, μζμνησθζ μηδζττοτζ Xcyeiv otl μόνοι Ιστ€. 
 ονδζ ίσ•Τ€' αλλ' 6 Oehs €v8ov εστί καΐ 6 νμ€Τ€ρο<; δαίμων €στί. 
 
 Το the same effect Marcus Aurelius (Comment, v. 27) says: — 
 
 ο-νζ-β δε deoLS 6 συνέχω? δεικννς avrois την εαυτοί) χΙ/υχην 
 αρζσκομίνην μ\ν rols άττονε/Λο/χενοι?, ττοιουσαν δε οσα βονλ^ται 6 
 δαίμων δν €κάστο) ττροσ-τάτην καΐ ηγ€μόνα 6 Ζεύ§ εδωκεν, απόσπασμα 
 εαυτού, ουτο? δε εστίν 6 εκάστου νου? και λόγο?. 
 
 So much for the philosophical outcome of the doctrine of 
 the δαίμων εκάστου — that part of the general doctrine of 
 aerial Βαίμονβ^; which seems to have been more interesting 
 than any other to Platonists and Stoics alike. 
 
 But what, it may be asked, is the ultimate source of this 
 belief in the Βαίμων εκάστου out of which moral theology, by 
 a rationalising process, has evolved " conscience," or even 
 " noumenal character." ^ 
 
 I would suggest that, in order to approach the answer to 
 this question, we first dismiss from our minds those aerial 
 Βαίμον€<ζ who never were incarnate (although it is to their 
 order, according to Plato, that the Βαίμονβς attached to indi- 
 viduals belong), and think only of the Hesiodic Βαίμονε^ί, the 
 Souls of dead men, inhabiting the Air. The notion of Βαίμονβς 
 who never were incarnate is subsequent to that of those who 
 are Souls of dead men inhabiting the air, and came in, we may 
 take it, only after the theological doctrine of the transcend- 
 ence of One Supreme God had established itself. That 
 theological doctrine required mediators between God and men, 
 beings through whom the creative and regulative functions of 
 God are exerted, while He Himself remains from everlasting 
 to everlasting unmoved ; and it was only logical to conceive 
 these beings as Powers of the Godhead anterior in time and 
 dignity to the Souls of men. 
 
 The primitive doctrine of Βαίμονβς, with which the later 
 one has less connection than might at first sight appear, is 
 that of the presence on, under, or near the Earth of the Souls 
 of dead ancestors ; and it is still a widely spread belief that 
 the company of these SoiJls is being continually drawn upon 
 
 1 See Rohde, Ρη /cJie, ii. 317. 
 
 2g 
 
450 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 to supply infants, as they are born, with Souls. No new Souls 
 come into being ; old Souls are always used. I have already 
 adverted to this belief/ and return to it here to suggest that 
 it is the source of the doctrine of the Βαίμων εκάστου or 
 Guardian Spirit of the individual. Every new person born is 
 at once himself and some deceased ancestor. He is essentially 
 double. " In the Niger Delta/' says Mr. J. E. King,^ citing 
 the authority of Miss Kingsley, " we are told that no one's soul 
 remains long below. The soul's return to its own family ^ is 
 ensured by special ju-jus. As the new babies arrive, they are 
 shown a selection of small articles belonging to deceased 
 members of the family. The child is identified by the article 
 which first attracts its attention. ' Why, he's Uncle John ; 
 see ! he knows his own pipe.' " 
 
 I would suggest that in " Uncle John " we have the 
 source out of which the notion of the Guardian Genius, the 
 μvστayωy6ς του βίου,^ was evolved. 
 
 The Jewish doctrine of Angels — on which the reader may 
 consult the Jewish Encyclopaedia, article " Angelology " — bears 
 considerable resemblance to the Greek doctrine of Βαίμονβς as 
 divine beings (not Souls of deceased men) intermediate between 
 God and men. Philo indeed goes the length of identifying the 
 Jewish Angels with the Βαίμονβς of the Greek philosophers.^ 
 
 The Jewish, like the parallel Greek doctrine, seems to 
 have been largely consequential on the doctrine of the tran- 
 scendence of One Supreme God.^ 
 
 1 See supra, pp. 198 ff. and pp. 302 if. 
 
 2 " Infant Burial," Classical Rev. Feb. 1903. Mr. King's reference is to Miss 
 Kingsley's Travels in West Africa, p. 493. 
 
 ^ Cf. Olympiodorus on Phaedo 70 c — δη τό ξωον καΐ τό τ€θΐ'€ώ$ έξ αλλήλων 
 κατασκ€νάξ'€ί έκ τψ μαρτυρίας των τταλαιων ποιητών των άττό Όρφέωί, φημί, 
 λέΎοντοί — 
 
 οΐ δ' αύτοΙ TraTOpes re και vUes έν με-γάροισιν 
 
 ήδ' άλοχοι σ€μναΙ κεδναί τε OuyaTpes — 
 
 ττανταχοΰ yap 6 Πλάτων τταρφδεΐ τα του *Ορφέως. 
 
 "Quorum," adds Lobeck {Aglaoph. p. 797), "liaec sententia esse videtur : 
 animis in corpora remigrantibus saepe fit, ut qui olim naturae et aifinitatis 
 vinculis conjuncti fuerant, postea aliquando in eandeui tiomum recolligantur ad 
 pristinam conditionem revoluti." 
 
 * &παντι δαίμων άνδρΐ συμτταραστατει 
 evdvs y€voμέvφ μυστayoύybs του βίου. — Menander. 
 
 ' De Somniis, i. 22 ; and also calls them λ(τ/οι (o.c. i. 12-19). 
 
 β See Hatch, Hihhert Lectures, 1888, pp. 246, 247 : Ιδέαι, λόyoι, δαίμονες, 
 &yy€λoι, are conceptions which easily pass into one another — a philosophical 
 basis, he argues, for the theory of a transcendent God was afforded by the 
 Platonic Ιδέαι and the Stoical λόyoι. 
 
GENEKAL OBSEEVATIONS ON MYTHS 
 
 WHICH SET FORTH THE NaTION'S, AS DISTINGUISHED FROM 
 
 THE Individual's, Ideals and Categories 
 
 Hitherto we have seen the Individual's Ideals and Cate- 
 gories set forth in Myth. Let us now conclude our review of 
 the Platonic Myths by looking at two, in one of which — the 
 Atlantis Myth -^ — we have a Nation's Ideal set forth — we 
 assist at the spectacle of a Nation led on by a Vision of its 
 Future; while in the other — the Myth of the Earth-Born, 
 the Foundation -myth of the καλΧίττόλίς^ — we have a 
 Nation's Categories deduced — the life of the " social organism " 
 is exhibited as conditioned by its Past, as determined a priori 
 by certain deep-cut characteristics. 
 
 The Atlantis Myth is introduced in the Timaeus as 
 necessary to complete the ideal of the καΧλίττόλις, or Perfect 
 State, presented in the BepuUic. The Timaeus, we must 
 remember, stands in very close artistic and philosophic con- 
 nection with the Republic, and begins with a recapitulation of 
 the first five books of the Bepublic. Having recapitulated, 
 Socrates says that he wishes now to see the Constitution of 
 their yesterday's conversation exhibited in action ; and it is 
 to meet this wish that Critias tells the story of Atlantis — 
 merely summarised in the Timaeus, but afterwards begun on 
 full scale in the Critias, unfortunately a fragment. 
 
 There are two chief points to be noticed about the follow- 
 ing on of the Atlantis Myth to complete the Republic : — 
 
 (1) It is an imaginary Athens in the Atlantis Myth, which 
 is the καΧΧίτΓοΧίζ of the Republic in action. Much has been 
 
 1 Tiinaeus, 19 ff. (where it is#ketched), and Critias (where it is begun on a 
 large scale, but not finished). 
 
 2 Republic, 414 b. 
 
 451 
 
452 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 said and written about Plato's dislike of Athenian democracy 
 and admiration of Spartan institutions as shown in the 
 Republic. The ideal city of the Republic has been epigram- 
 matically described as " a Dorian State and a Pythagorean 
 Order." But it is a glorified Athens, not Sparta, which 
 represents Hellas against barbarism in the Myth told by 
 Critias. "Athens, with all thy faults I love thee still," is 
 Plato's deepest sentiment. 
 
 (2) The action of the καΧλίττοΧις is assumed without 
 question to be war. The education of the Republic is the 
 education of warriors, and the Myth of Atlantis is the History 
 of a Great War which puts that education to practical test. 
 Of all Utopias, Plato's is the most militant. The Philosophers 
 who rule are recruited from the Army. Only those who have 
 first learnt, as patriotic soldiers, to reverence the ideal of 
 Country one and indivisible, can afterwards comprehend that 
 ideal intellectually in its contour and articulation — can take 
 the "synoptic view" required in the Philosopher-King. 
 Industrial people immersed in private affairs never rise, either 
 as patriots or as statesmen, to the ideal of Country one and 
 indivisible. A " Philosophic Banker," as Grote was called, 
 Plato could not have conceived. Civilisation, as its course is 
 sketched in the Second Book of the Republic,^ begins with 
 the formation of an Army. The little rustic vyirj^ ττόλί? — 
 the City of Pigs — contented with mere comfort, can never 
 become the home of civilisation. It is out of the unrest and 
 lust of the φΧβ^μαίνονσα ττόΧίς that civilisation is evolved; 
 for in order to satisfy its lust it must go to war, and in order 
 to wage war successfully it must have professional soldiers, 
 who, if they are not to turn upon their fellow-citizens and 
 rend them, must be trained in a certain manner. What, then, 
 is to be the training of these soldiers ? They were called 
 into existence solely, it would appear, for the purpose of 
 serving the evil policy of the φΧβ^/μαίνουσα ττόλί?. But where 
 is now the φΧβ'^μαίνουσα ττόΧίς ? It is gone — only its soldiers 
 remain ; and, by one of those dream-like transformations which 
 mean so much in Plato's Philosophy, its soldiers are changed 
 into the Guardians of the καΧΧίττοΧις to be; and, without a 
 word of explanation offered, a beginning is straightway made 
 1 Bepuhlic, 372, 373. 
 
GENEKAL OBSEKVATIONS 453 
 
 of their training for the service of that city. And what does 
 this dream-like transformation mean ? That the highest good 
 is won only in the struggle against difi&culties into which evil 
 passions have brought us — 
 
 What we call sin 
 I could believe a painful opening out 
 Of paths for ampler virtue.^ 
 
 The contented life of the ^7*979 ττόΧις must be succeeded by 
 the restless lustful life of the φΧβ^μ^αίνουσα ΐΓολις, in order 
 that upon the necessity of war the beauty of true civilisation 
 may be grafted by discipline and education. 
 
 The doctrine of the BejpuUic, then, is that the leaders of 
 civilisation are men who have been trained for war — 6 δε ye 
 ήμβτβρος φνΧαξ ττόλ^μικός re καί φιλόσοφος τυ^'χάνευ ων? 
 Here Plato seems to me to take hold of a fundamental prin- 
 ciple in biology. Look at the races of living creatures : their 
 specific beauty and intelligence have been developed on lines 
 laid down by the necessity of defence and attack : victrix 
 causa deis placuit It does not astonish the reader of the 
 BepuUic, then, to see the Myth of the καΧλίττοΧί^; completed 
 by the Atlantis Myth, in which the Military State, small 
 and disciplined, overthrows the Commercial State, large and 
 luxurious. The individual Soul may indeed pass out of the 
 κνκΧος ^γβνύσβων and enter into peace — e venni dal martirio 
 a questa pace ; ^ but the State has no immortal destiny — it is 
 of this world, and is always implicated in the struggle of the 
 earthly life. ΤΙοΧβμοΰμβν Xv είρηνην α<γωμ€ν is not in 
 Plato's vein. Were war to cease in the world, what would 
 become of the Platonic system of Education ? Plato does not 
 expect — and, more than that, does not wish — to see war cease. 
 His ideal of earthly life is Hellas in arms against Barbarism. 
 War began in βττίθυμία, in appetite ; then it was waged to 
 satisfy θυμός — for la gloire ; and we ought to hope that the 
 time will come when it will be waged only in the cause of 
 λόγο? — to propagate an idea ; but let us remember — this is 
 Plato's message to us, as I understand it — that the " idea " 
 we fight for — our iv τούτω νικάς — is a sign which shines only 
 
 ^ Clough, DipsychiLS. ^ RepubliCy 625 Β * Par, χ v. 148. 
 
454 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 before the eyes of the militant, and would fade from the sky 
 if we laid down our arms. 
 
 The Atlantis Myth throws the future back into the past — 
 it reflects, in the form of a History of Invaders coming from 
 the West, Plato's hope and fear as he looks towards the East. 
 The shadow of Persian Invasion still darkened Greece. Plato, 
 in the καΧλίττολις of the Bepuhlic and the Atlantis Myth, sets 
 forth his ideal of a glorified Athens which, under the spiritual 
 leadership of the Delphian Apollo,^ shall undertake the politi- 
 cal leadership of a united Hellas, in order to stem the onslaught 
 of the Barbarian, and maintain the Hellenic ideal of " culture " 
 against the barbaric reality of " material civilisation." Thus, 
 taken in connection with each other, as they certainly ought 
 to be, the BepuUic and the Atlantis Myth set forth a dream 
 of the future which takes rank beside Dante's dream of Empire 
 and Church in the de Monarchia. 
 
 Plato's dream was soon to come true, though not in the 
 manner which any forecast of his could have anticipated ; for 
 even Aristotle writes as if Alexander had not conquered Asia 
 and opened a new epoch for Hellas and the world. " The 
 history of Greece," says Prof. Percy Gardner,^ " consists of 
 two parts, in every respect contrasted the one with the other. 
 The first recounts the stories of the Persian and Peloponnesian 
 wars, and ends with the destruction of Thebes and the subju- 
 gation of Athens and Sparta. The Hellas of which it speaks 
 is a cluster of autonomous cities in the Peloponnesus, the 
 Islands, and Northern Greece, together with their colonies 
 scattered over the coasts of Italy, Sicily, Thrace, the Black 
 Sea, Asia Minor, and Africa. These cities care only to be 
 independent, or, at most, to lord it over one another. Their 
 political institutions, their religious ceremonies, their customs, 
 are civic and local. Language, commerce, a common Pantheon, 
 and a common art and poetry are the ties that bind them^ 
 together. In its second phase, Greek history begins with the 
 expedition of Alexander. It reveals to us the Greek as every- 
 where lord of the barbarian, as founding kingdoms and 
 federal systems, as the instructor of all mankind in art and 
 science, and the spreader of civil and civilised life over the 
 
 ^ Republic, 427 b, c. 
 * Neto Chapters in Greek History, pp. 416-417. 
 
GENEKAL OBSEKVATIONS 455 
 
 known world. In the first period of her history Greece is 
 forming herself, in her second she is educating the world. 
 We will venture to borrow from the Germans a convenient 
 expression, and call the history of independent Greece the 
 history of Hellas — that of imperial Greece the history of 
 Hellenism/' 
 
 The ideal, adumbrated in the Bepuhlic and the Atlantis 
 Myth, of a Hellenic Empire, created and maintained by the 
 joint forces of Athens and Delphi, is one between which and 
 the ideal of personal salvation through union with God — 
 ομοίωσις τω θβω — there is a very real opposition. The more 
 men live for the ideal of national greatness the less does the 
 ideal of personal salvation concern them. Plato's chief interest 
 undoubtedly was in the ideal of personal salvation, which he 
 derived mainly from the Orphic religion ; and it was exactly 
 this Orphic element in Platonism which constituted by far the 
 most important part of its influence on subsequent philosophy, 
 and, more especially, on the development of Christian doctrine 
 and practice. The Heaven and Hell and Purgatory of Chris- 
 tian eschatology come not, to any large extent, from Jewish 
 sources, or from the teaching of the Gospels and Epistles, but 
 mainly from the Apocalypses, which are thoroughly Orphic 
 in matter and spirit.^ It is not to be supposed, of course, that 
 the Apocalypses got their Orphism or " Sacramentalism " — 
 to use a term which covers the ground better — from Plato. 
 They got it from the teaching of the Orphic and similar 
 sacramental societies which existed throughout the world. 
 But the direction given, at the beginning, to Christian thought 
 and feeling, and, it is safe to add, to Christian practice, by the 
 influence of these societies, produced a condition of religious 
 belief which afterwards lent itself easily to the influence of 
 the refined Orphism of the Platonists. 
 
 Just as the ideal of national greatness on Earth, though 
 we see it in the Republic and Atlantis Myth swimming into 
 Plato's ken, was of little account to him, and to those whom 
 he influenced, beside the ideal of personal salvation through 
 union with God, — so, in the development of Christianity, to 
 which Platonism contributed so much, the materialistic Jewish 
 
 1 See Gardner's ExplorcUio Evangelica, p. 270, with reference to Dieterich's 
 analysis of the Apocalypse of Peter. 
 
456 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 conception of a reign of the Messiah on Earth, over a chosen 
 people raised in their earthly bodies from the dead, gave place 
 to the spiritual ideal of union with the Heavenly Christ be- 
 ginning for each man now in this present life and continuing 
 for ever — the ideal which St. Paul came at last to cherish, 
 " having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is 
 far better." ^ 
 
 1 PMl. i. 23 ; and see Gardner's Exp. Ev. pp. 435-438. 
 
THE ATLANTIS MYTH 
 
 Critias begins by saying ^ that he heard the story, when he 
 was a boy, from his grandfather Critias, who had heard it from 
 his father Dropides, who got it from Solon. Solon brought 
 it from Egypt, having got it from a priest of ISTeith — that is, 
 of Athena — at Sais. Solon had been telling the priests of 
 Neith some of the old Greek stories, especially that about the 
 Flood which Deucalion and Pyrrha survived, when a very 
 aged priest exclaimed, "You Greeks are always children; 
 there is not an old man among you ! " meaning that the 
 oldest Greek stories were but of yesterday. Deucalion's Flood 
 was not the only one ; there were many Floods and other 
 catastrophes before it, by which civilisations both in Greece 
 and in other parts of the world were destroyed. But Egypt 
 had been exempt from catastrophes, and her priests had 
 made records, which were still preserved in continuous 
 series, of all that had happened, not only in Egypt, but 
 in other parts of the world, during the successive periods 
 terminated by the various Floods and other catastrophes. 
 Among these records was one relating to the Athens which 
 flourished before the greatest of the Floods. This Athens, 
 the aged priest told Solon, Athena founded nine thousand 
 years before his time — one thousand years before she founded 
 Sais ; and the constitution of the antediluvian Athens was 
 similar to that which the sister city of Sais still preserved, 
 especially in the separation of the class of priests and the 
 class of warriors from a third class, including the castes of 
 artisans, shepherds, huntsmen, and husbandmen. He then 
 went on to give the History of the Great War in which 
 Athens, so constituted, "^as engaged with the people of the 
 
 ^ Timaeus, 20 e. 
 457 
 
458 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Island of Atlantis, explaining that this island, which was 
 larger than Libya and Asia together, lay in the Ocean outside, 
 off the straits now called the Pillars of Hercules. Beyond 
 this island there were other islands in the Atlantic Ocean, by 
 means of which it was possible to pass to the Continent on 
 the farther side of that Ocean. In the Island of Atlantis itself 
 there was a mighty dynasty of Kings who ruled over that 
 island, over many of the adjacent islands, over parts of the 
 Transatlantic Continent, and over Libya as far as Egypt, and, 
 on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, as far as Etruria. 
 This mighty Power, collecting all its forces, was moving east- 
 wards to add to its empire the remaining Mediterranean 
 countries, Greece and Egypt, when Athens stood forth as 
 their champion ; and, now leading the other Greek States, 
 now deserted by them, waged a glorious war against the in- 
 vaders, and conquered them, and not only saved Greece and 
 Egypt, but liberated the Western Mediterranean countries 
 which had been enslaved. Then, sometime after, came the 
 Deluge. Athens was overwhelmed, in a day and a night, by 
 flood and earthquake ; and the Island of Atlantis sank under 
 the sea, leaving shoals which still render the navigation of the 
 Ocean difficult in these parts. 
 
 This is the Atlantis Myth as sketched by Critias in the 
 Timaeus} 
 
 He then proposes to enter fully into its details, on the 
 understanding that the citizens of the Ideal State constructed 
 in the JRepuUic are identified with the citizens of the ante- 
 diluvian Athens; but first, Timaeus must give his promised 
 account of the creation of the world and of man, so that, when 
 all is said, we may have the full history of man — created in 
 the Timaeus, educated in the RejpuUic, and acquitting himself 
 nobly in the Atlantis Myth. 
 
 The Critias, in which the Atlantis Myth was to have been 
 told fully, is a fragment — a fragment, however, of considerable 
 bulk ; and I do not propose to translate it verbatim or to 
 print the Greek text. A detailed account of its contents will 
 serve our purpose sufficiently. 
 
 The fragment begins by saying that, in the old time, the 
 Earth was divided into provinces, each of which was directly 
 
 1 21A-25D. 
 
THE ATLANTIS MYTH 459 
 
 governed by a God, or Gods.^ Thus Athens was assigned to 
 Hephaestus and Athena, brother and sister, and the Island of 
 Atlantis to Poseidon. 
 
 The Athens of Athena and Hephaestus was constituted 
 according to the model set forth in the Republic. There were 
 artisans and husbandmen, and a class of warriors originally 
 set apart by certain " divine men." The warriors dwelt to- 
 gether, and had all things in common, being supported by the 
 labour of the other citizens. Men and women alike practised 
 the art of warfare. The territory of the city, co -extensive 
 with Attica as it now is, was the most fertile in the world. 
 What is now a mere skeleton of mountains and rocks was 
 then filled in with rich soil, so that what are now mountains 
 were then only hills ; and Pnyx, Acropolis, and Lycabettus 
 formed one almost level ridge of loam. On the top of this 
 ridge, where the Acropolis now is, the warriors lived round 
 the Temple of Athena and Hephaestus, their winter quarters 
 towards the north, and their summer quarters towards the 
 south. The number of these warriors, men and women, was 
 always about twenty thousand. They were the guardians 
 (φύλακες) of their own citizens, and the leaders (J^ye^ove^) 
 of the other Greeks their willing followers. Such were the 
 ancient Athenians ; and they were famous throughout Europe 
 and Asia for the beauty of their bodies and the various virtues 
 of their souls. 
 
 To Poseidon the Island of Atlantis was allotted. Near the 
 centre of the island there was a fertile plain, and near it a 
 mountain. In this mountain dwelt the earth-born Evenor, 
 who had a daughter Cleito. Her Poseidon loved, and enclosed 
 the mountain in which she lived with concentric rings of sea 
 and land, three of sea and two of land, so that it could not be 
 approached, for at that time there were no ships. Being a 
 god, he easily brought subterranean streams of water, one cold 
 and the other hot, to this island-mountain, and made it fruit- 
 ful. Here he begat ten sons ; and he divided the whole island 
 of Atlantis among them into ten parts. To the first-born, 
 who was named Atlas, he gave the island-mountain and sur- 
 rounding territory, and also made him King of the whole 
 of Atlantis, his nine brethren being governors under him in 
 1 Cf. Politicus, 271 b, and Laws, iv. 712 ε ff. 
 
460 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 their several provinces. From Atlas were descended the 
 Kings of Atlantis in long and unbroken line ; and under them 
 the island prospered greatly, receiving much through foreign 
 trade, and itself producing much — metals, timber, spices, and 
 all manner of food for man, and pasture for the elephants and 
 other animals which abounded. Great works were also carried 
 out by these Kings. . . . First they made a bridge across the 
 rings of sea which enclosed the ancient metropolis, and began 
 to build a palace on the island-mountain, to the size and 
 adornment of which each generation added till it became a 
 wonder. Then they dug a canal 50 stadia long, 300 feet 
 broad, and 100 feet deep, making a waterway for the largest 
 ships from the ocean to their metropolis, which thus became a 
 seaport. They also cut passages for ships through the two 
 rings of land, and spanned the passages by bridges under 
 which ships could go. The first ring of land, like the outer- 
 most ring of sea, was three stadia broad ; the second ring of 
 land, like the ring of sea which enclosed it, was two stadia 
 broad ; while the ring of water which immediately surrounded 
 the island-mountain was one stade wide ; the island-mountain 
 itself being five stadia across. The island-mountain and its 
 palace they surrounded with a wall ; and another wall they 
 built round the circuit of the mid ring of land ; and a third 
 wall round the circuit of the outer ring of land ; and also a 
 wall on either side of the great bridge leading from the coun- 
 try without to that ring ; and towers and gates they placed at 
 the bridges which spanned the passages cut in both rings of 
 land. The stone for the walls they quarried from the foot of 
 the island-mountain and from both sides of the two rings of 
 land, thus at the same time making cavities in the rock which 
 served as covered docks. The stone was of three kinds — white, 
 black, and red ; and these three kinds, pieced together in one 
 building, made it beautiful to behold. The outermost wall 
 was coated with brass, laid on like ointment ; the middle wall 
 with tin, and the wall of the Acropolis itself with orichalcum 
 glancing red like fire. Within the enclosure of the Acropolis 
 was first the holy place of Cleito and Poseidon, in which no 
 man might set foot — the spot where the ten sons were be- 
 gotten. It was surrounded with a golden fence. Thither 
 they brought the seasonable fruits of the earth, from each of 
 
THE ATLANTIS MYTH 461 
 
 the ten provinces, as offerings to each of the ten sons. Then 
 there was the Temple of Poseidon himself, in length a stade, 
 in breadth three plethra, and of proportionate height, on the 
 outside coated all over with silver except the pinnacles, which 
 were coated with gold — a spectacle of barbaric splendour ; and 
 within, the roof of ivory inlaid with gold and silver and 
 orichalcum, and all other parts — walls, pillars, and floor — 
 covered over with orichalcum — and images all golden ; the 
 God himself mounted on a chariot driving six winged horses, 
 his head towering up to the roof of the temple, and round him 
 in a ring a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins ; and there 
 were other images too, which had been put up by private 
 persons within the temple ; and outside, golden statues of the 
 Kings and their wives, and many other statues presented by 
 persons at home and in foreign countries belonging to the 
 Atlantic Empire. There was also an altar in keeping with 
 the temple, and there were magnificent palaces hard by. 
 
 The numerous fountains of cold and hot water which 
 Poseidon had caused to spring in his island-mountain were 
 housed and made to serve as baths for the Kings, for private 
 persons, for women, and for horses and other beasts of burden ; 
 and the water not used in this way was conducted, some of it 
 to the beautiful grove of Poseidon in the island-mountain, 
 some of it by aqueducts across the bridges to the two rings of 
 land, where also there were temples and gardens and gymnasia 
 and race-courses for horses — especially in the outermost of the 
 two rings, where there was a race-course a stade wide running 
 right round the ring. Along this grand course were the 
 quarters of the main body of the troops ; a smaller number of 
 trusted troops was quartered in the inner ring of land, and 
 the most trusted of all in the Acropolis itself as bodyguard 
 to the Kings. 
 
 The docks close under the island-mountain and the two 
 rings of land were full of war-ships and stores ; and when you 
 crossed these two rings and came to the outermost ring of sea, 
 or harbour, you found it and the canal leading to the ocean 
 full of merchant shipping. At the ocean-mouth of this canal 
 the two semicircles met of a wall which ran always at a dis- 
 tance of fifty stades from^ the outermost ring of sea, and en- 
 closed a densely-populated area. 
 
462 THE MYTHS OF PIATO 
 
 So much for the royal city. Atlantis itself was a moun- 
 tainous island, save for the plain in which the royal city 
 stood. This plain was oblong, extending 3000 stades in one 
 direction, and 2000 inland through the centre of the island. 
 The mountains which enclosed it were great and beautiful, and 
 sheltered it from the north wind. A fosse 10,000 stades long, 
 one stade broad, and a hundred feet deep — a work, it may be 
 thought, of superhuman magnitude — was carried round the 
 whole oblong of the plain. The streams from the mountains 
 poured into it, and it had an outlet into the ocean. From the 
 furthest inland part of it parallel canals were cut through the 
 plain at intervals of one hundred stades, and these were con- 
 nected by cross canals. By means of this system of canals, 
 timber and fruits were brought down to the city. There were 
 two harvests, one after the winter rains, the other in summer, 
 raised by irrigation from the canals. The plain was divided 
 into 60,000 lots, each lot being a square with sides measuring 
 ten stades. Over those fit for military service in each lot was 
 set a Leader ; and there were likewise Leaders of those who 
 dwelt in the mountains and other parts of the country — a vast 
 population — according to their settlements and villages. Each 
 Leader was bound to supply a sixth part of the cost of a chariot 
 of war — in this way 10,000 chariots were furnished; he was 
 also bound to supply two horses with riders, and a light chariot 
 for a pair of horses, with a shield-bearer to go on foot with it, 
 and a driver to ride in it and drive the horses ; each Leader 
 was also bound to supply two heavy-armed soldiers, two archers, 
 two slingers, and, as skirmishers, three stone-throwers and 
 three men armed with javelins, also four sailors to help to man 
 the fleet of 1200 war-ships. Such was the armament of the 
 capital ; and the nine provinces had also their own different 
 armaments, but it would be tedious to describe these. 
 
 In each of the nine provinces, as well as in the capital, its 
 own King was supreme over the lives of the citizens and the 
 administration of the laws ; but the dealings of the ten 
 governments with one another were determined by the Com- 
 mandments of Poseidon, which were engraved by the first men 
 on a Table of orichalcum, which was preserved in the Temple of 
 Poseidon on the island-mountain. There, every fifth year and 
 every sixth year alternately, a meeting was held for the dis- 
 
THE ATLANTIS MYTH 463 
 
 cussion of affairs and the judgment of transgressions ; and this 
 is how they conducted their business : — There were sacred 
 bulls, which were kept within the precincts of Poseidon. The 
 Ten, who were left alone in the precincts, after they had prayed 
 to the god that they might take that bull which should be an 
 acceptable sacrifice to him, began to hunt the bulls, without 
 weapons of iron, with staves and nooses ; and when they had 
 taken one of them they brought him to the Table of the Com- 
 mandments, and there struck him on the head and shed his 
 blood over the writing, and afterwards burnt his members, and 
 mingled a bowl, casting into it clots of his blood, one clot for 
 each of the Ten. Then they drew from the bowl in golden 
 vials, and poured a libation on the fire, and swore that they 
 would give judgments, and do all things, according to the 
 Commandments of their Father Poseidon written on the Table. 
 When they had drunken of the vials, and dedicated them in 
 the Temple, they supped ; and after supper, when it was dark 
 and the sacrificial fire had died down, they put on azure robes 
 exceeding beautiful, and sat down on the ground about the 
 embers, all the lights in the Temple having been extinguished, 
 and there, in the darkness of night, judged and were judged ; 
 and when day dawned they wrote the judgments on a golden 
 tablet, and laid it by, along with their robes, for a memorial. 
 
 There were laws also regulating the behaviour of the Ten 
 Kings towards one another. They were not to make war 
 against one another ; they were to aid any one of their 
 number if his subjects rose against him in rebellion and tried 
 to overthrow his dynasty ; they were to take counsel together 
 about war and other matters, always recognising the suze- 
 rainty of the line of Atlas ; and a majority of the Ten must 
 agree before a King could put to death one of his kinsmen. 
 
 For a long while the people of Atlantis preserved the 
 divine nature that was in them, and obeyed the laws and loved 
 the Gods, honouring virtue above gold and all other possessions, 
 and using their wealth in temperance and brotherly love. But 
 in course of time their divine nature, from admixture with 
 human nature, became feeble, and they were corrupted by their 
 prosperity, so that, in the end, their life, at the very time 
 when it seemed most gloiious, was indeed most debased, being 
 filled with lust of wealth and power. Then Zeus, God of Gods, 
 
464 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 whose kingship is the rule of law, perceiving that a noble 
 nation was in a wretched plight, and wishing to punish them 
 that they might be reformed by chastisement, summoned all 
 the Gods to an assembly in his most holy mansion, which, being 
 situate in the centre of the Cosmos, beholds all things which 
 partake of generation ; and, when the Gods were assembled, 
 spake unto them thus : — 
 
THE ATLANTIS MYTH 465 
 
 Observations on the Geology and Geography of 
 THE Atlantis Myth 
 
 Enough, I hope, has been said to indicate the importance 
 of the Atlantis Myth as setting forth the ideal of Imperial 
 Hellas ; and now a few remarks may be added on the interest- 
 ing, though comparatively unimportant, topics of its Geology 
 and Geography. 
 
 Mr. Arthur Piatt, in a very instructive article on " Plata 
 and Geology," 1 after quoting from the Critias (110 e) Plato's 
 account of the antediluvian Attica as a rolling champaign very 
 different from the broken rocky country of the present epoch, 
 says : " To put this into the language of modern geology we 
 should say, ' The whole of Attica has suffered great denuda- 
 tion, withstood by the underlying hard rocks, which now 
 accordingly stand out like the skeleton of the country.' " Mr. 
 Piatt does well in claiming for Plato, on the strength of the 
 Critias, rank as an " original geologist." " Sir Charles Lyell," 
 he says, " in his history of the progress of geology,^ has en- 
 tirely omitted the name of Plato as an original geologist, and 
 I am not aware that this omission has ever been corrected. 
 Yet it is in reality a serious one. . . . This statement of 
 denudation by Plato is, I believe, the first ever made, certainly 
 the first upon so grand a scale. It is true that Herodotus 
 (ii. 10 ff.), when he speaks of the formation of the Delta 
 in Egypt, implies denudation of those districts which furnish 
 the alluvium . . . but he does not call attention to this 
 necessary denudation, and does not seem to have appreciated 
 its consequences, his mind being fixed solely on the formation 
 of the new deposit. Plato therefore must have the credit of the 
 first distinct enunciation of a most important geological doc- 
 trine." " The next question," Mr. Piatt proceeds, " is : Is this 
 doctrine, however true in general, true of Attica in particular ? '* 
 and he quotes Lyell's authority for an afi&rmative answer : "'The 
 whole fauna,' says Lyell, speaking of the remains of Miocene 
 age discovered by Gaudry in Attica, ' attests the former ex- 
 tension of a vast expanse of grassy plains, where we have 
 
 1 Journal of Philology, vol. xviii. pp. 134-139 (1889). 
 ^ Priiiciples of Geology ^ chap. ii. 
 
 2h 
 
466 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 now the broken and mountainous country of Greece, — plains 
 which were probably united with Asia Minor, spreading over 
 the area where the deep Egean Sea and its numerous islands 
 are now situated.' " Mr. Piatt concludes his article with a 
 quotation from Gaudry (Animaux Fossiles et Goologie de 
 I'AUique, 1862),^ in which that geologist gives his own per- 
 sonal experience of the effect of short downpours of rain, in 
 Attica and other parts of Greece, in carrying away vast quan- 
 tities of soil. " A man accustomed to such debacles," remarks 
 Mr. Piatt, "might more easily talk of 'one night's rainfall' 
 carrying off the whole surface of the Acropolis than could a 
 dweller in our climate." In " compelling nature to do all her 
 work in a single night " Plato was doubtless wrong, as Mr. 
 Piatt insists, from the point of view of geology as reformed by 
 Lyell ; at the same time, I would have the reader of the Critias 
 bear in mind that the geology of that work is, after all, the 
 geology of the Aetiological Myth, in which a result, which 
 Plato, as scientific observer, may well have conceived as due to 
 a secular process, was bound to be attributed to a " catastrophe." 
 
 A few words now on the Geography of the Myth. I do 
 not think that it is necessary to suppose, or that it is even 
 likely, that Plato had any sailors' stories of a great land beyond 
 the Western Ocean on which to found his Myth. Nor can the 
 ostensible source of the Myth — Egypt — have been the real 
 source. Egyptologists know nothing of a lost Atlantis.^ As 
 for the interesting circumstance that recent Physical Geography 
 assumes the former existence of a so-called " Atlantis," ^ that, 
 of course, is without bearing on the question of the source of 
 Plato's Myth. 
 
 Atlantis, I take it, is a creation of Plato's own imagina- 
 tion * — a creation which he knows how to give verisimilitude 
 to by connecting with the accepted " scientific " doctrine of 
 terrestrial catastrophes (which we have already seen presented 
 in the Politicus Myth), and also with what was believed, in 
 
 1 Pages 450, 451. 
 
 2 So Sander, Atlantis, p. 11, on the authority of Brugsch. 
 
 3 See H. J. Mackinder's Britain and the British Seas, p. 98 — "a continental 
 * Atlantis ' of which Greenland and the Scoto-Icelandic rise may be remnants " ; 
 and see also pp. 100, 103, 140, 177, 179, 354, 355, 357. 
 
 ^ This, the only reasonable view, as it seems to me, is that of Jowett (Intro- 
 duction to the Critias), Bunbury {History of Ancient Geography, i. 402), and 
 Sander, Atlantis. 
 
THE ATLANTIS MYTH 467 
 
 his day, to be a fact — the shallow muddy nature of the ocean 
 outside the Pillars of Hercules. This supposed fact is recorded 
 by Scylax, whose liepiirXov^, or Circumnavigation, was written 
 some time before the accession of Philip.^ Scylax speaks of 
 " many trading stations of the Carthaginians, and much mud, 
 and high tides, and open seas, outside the Pillars of Hercules " 
 — άτΓο ΎίρακΚβίων στηΧών των iv rrj ΈίνρώττΎ} έμττόρία ττοΧΧα 
 Κ.αρ'χ7}Βονίων καΐ ττηΧοζ και ττΧημμυρίΒβς καΧ ττβΧά'γη (^Perip, 
 § 1). "It is evident," says Bunbury, commenting on this 
 passage,^ " that these seas were never at this time visited by 
 Greek traders, while the confused notions of the obstacles to 
 their navigation, purposely diffused by the Carthaginians, were 
 all that had reached our author's ears." Similarly, in the 
 Aristotelian Meteorologica, ii. 1. 354 a 22, we are told that 
 the sea outside the Pillars is shallow and muddy, and windless 
 — τα δ' ίξω στηΧων βραχεία μεν Βια τον ττηΧόν, άττνοα δ' 
 €στϊν ώς iv κοίΧω της θαΧάττης ούσης — which again shows, 
 Bunbury remarks,^ " how little it was known to the Greek 
 mariners." "* 
 
 The Island of Atlantis, then, is a creation of Plato's 
 imagination, rendered " probable " by the confirmation of 
 *' science " and " observed facts " — a creation intended to con- 
 trast with the καΧΧίτΓοΧις, the creation of the Republic — 
 intended to stand as " the negative," as Sander puts it,^ of the 
 antediluvian Athens. The People of Poseidon (commerce) 
 must yield to the People of Athena (wisdom) and Hephaestus 
 (handicraft). Carthage, of course, may well have helped 
 Plato to seize the type described in this selfish Commercial 
 Atlantis, greedy of Empire — like England, as she appears to 
 her rivals. 
 
 While the attempt to trace Plato's Atlantis to the tales of 
 Phoenician or other navigators who had visited the American 
 islands or continent is, I feel sure, as mistaken on the one 
 side as the Neo-Platonic exegesis is on the other side, which 
 interprets the Myth as an allegory of the struggle of matter 
 
 1 Bunbury, o.c. i. 385-386. * o.c. i. p. 386. ^ ^.c. i. 398. 
 
 * The pseudo- Aristotelian de Mundo (see Rose de Ar. lib. ord. et auct. pp. 
 90-100) "bears," says Bunbury (i. 398), "the unquestionable stamp of a much 
 more advanced stage of geographical knowledge than that of the age of 
 Aristotle." See also Grote's Hist, of Greece, ii. 462 (ed. 1862). 
 
 ^ F. Sander, Atlantis, p. 6. 
 
468 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 against fonn/ yet it must be noted that the Platonic creation 
 was not without practical influence on the age which produced 
 Columbus. Plato was then for tlie first time being read in Greek 
 by Western scholars,^ and his wonderful land across the ocean, 
 so circumstantially described in the Critias, came to be talked 
 about as a possibility at least. Maritime discovery soon con- 
 verted the possibility into a reality ; and Plato was very 
 naturally credited with knowledge which a more critical 
 scholarship than that of the Kenaissance now sees that he 
 could not have possessed. 
 
 Before closing these observations I must notice a scholium 
 on the opening sentences of the Rejpuhlic which might be 
 taken to imply that the war between Athens and Atlantis 
 was a stock Athenian Myth. The scholium says that at the 
 Little Panathenaea a peplus was woven, and embroidered with 
 the War of Athens and Atlantis.^ Of course, it might be 
 argued that this custom was subsequent to Plato's time, and 
 that the Myth on the peplus was taken from Plato ; for Critias 
 introduces his story as unheard before. This, however, is very 
 unlikely. A popular ceremony can hardly have originated in 
 that way. If the scholiast is right, it is pretty plain that the 
 story of the War of Athens and Atlantis (in spite of what 
 Callias says about its being hitherto unknown) was known at 
 Athens long before Plato's time. But the scholiast is not 
 
 ^ See Sander, ox. p. 17. 
 
 2 The Atlantis Myth as it appears in the Critias was then being read in the 
 West for the first time ; but the Timaeus, to 53 c, was already knoAvn in the 
 Latin version of Chalcidius {circ. Cent. V.). It is strange that Dante, who knew 
 the Tiinaeus in this version (either directly, or as Mr. Toynbee, Dante Diet, art. 
 "Timeo^," thinks more probable, through Albertus Magnus and S. Thomas 
 Aquinas), nowhere mentions or refers to Atlantis. The land which Ulysses 
 sights {Inf. xxvi.) is the Mount of Purgatory iu the Southern Hemisphere, not 
 Fortunate Islands or an Atlantis in the Western Ocean. The commentary of 
 Chalcidius does not touch the introductory part of the Timaeus, which is, how- 
 ever, contained in the version ; and Dante's references to the Timaeus (the only 
 work of Plato of which he shows any special knowledge) are limited to topics 
 occurring in the Discourse of the chief speaker, with which alone the commentary 
 of Chalcidius deals. This seems to make for the view that Dante knew the 
 Timaeus only through his own study of the commentary, or through the 
 references of other writers to it and the corresponding part of the version, and 
 that he had no first-hand acquaintance with the version itself as a whole. If he 
 had read the first part of the version, it is difficult to understand his not having 
 been struck by the Destruction of Atlantis, and his not having made use of an 
 event so suitable for poetic treatment. 
 
 3 τά δέ μικρά. ΙΙαναθήναια κατά τ6ν Uetpaia ίτέΧουν, έν 61$ καΐ ττέττΧο^ dWos 
 άνεΐτο rrj θβφ, καθ' δν ijv ίδβΐν toos Άθηναίου$, τροφίμου$ Ovras avrijs, νικώντας τόν 
 πρόί Άτλαντίνον$ ττόλβμον. — Schol. on Republ. 327 Α. 
 
THE ATLANTIS MYTH 469 
 
 right. His note is founded on a stupid misunderstanding 
 of a passage in the commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus, 
 where the remark is made that Callias has woven a Myth 
 worthy of Athena. Proclus is evidently speaking metaphori- 
 cally. There is no question of the Atlantis Myth being 
 actually represented on a peplus.^ 
 
 So far as the Bepuhlic scholiast is concerned, then, we may 
 adhere to our view that the Atlantis Myth is the product of 
 Plato's own imagination. 
 
 ^ See Sander, Atlantis, p. 13. 
 
Bepublic 414 B-4 1 5 D 
 
 414 Β Ύίς αν ovv ήμΐν, ην δ' εγώ, μηγανη yevoiTO των 
 
 ψευΒών των iv heovTi ^^ι,^νομ,ίνων, ων Βη νυν eke^yo^evy 
 
 C yevvalov τι ev ψβυΒο μένους ττεΐσαΰ μάΧοστα μβν και αυτούς 
 τους αρ'χρντας^ ei Be μη, την άΧλην ττοΧιν ; ΤίοΙον τι ; 
 βφη, Μ-ηΒΙν καινόν, ην δ* €γώ, αλλά Φοινικικόν τι, 7Γροτ€- 
 ρον μεν ηΒη ττοΧλαχ^οΰ γεγοι/ο?, ως φασιν οΐ ττοιηταϊ και 
 ττεττείκασιν, εφ* ημών Be ου γεγοι/ο? ούδ' οΙΒα ει ^ενομενον 
 αν, ττεΐσαι Βε συγνης ττειθοΰς. Ώ>ς εοικας, εφη, οκνουντι 
 λεγβίζ/. Δο^ω δε σοι, ην δ' εγώ, καϊ μάλ* είκοτως οκνεΐν, 
 
 D εττειΒαν είττω. Λεγ', εφη, και μη φόβου. Λέγω δ?; • καίτοι 
 ουκ οϊΒα, οτΓοία τόλμη ή ττοίοις \6<γοις γ^ρώμενος ερώ' καϊ 
 ετΓΐ'χειρησω ττρώτον μεν αυτούς τους άργοντας ττείθειν και 
 τους στρατίώτας, εττειτα δε και την αΧλην ττολιν, ώς άρ^ 
 α ημείς αυτούς ετρεφομεν τε καϊ ετταιΒεύομεν, ώσττερ ονείρατα 
 εΒόκουν ταύτα ττάντα ττάσγειν τε καϊ η'ιηνεσθαι ττερϊ αυτούς, 
 ήσαν δε τότε ttj αλήθεια ύττο ^ής εντός ττλαττόμενοι καϊ 
 τρεφόμενοι καϊ αύτοϊ καϊ τα οττλα αυτών καϊ ή άλλη 
 
 £ σκευή Βημιουρ'γουμενη, εττειΒη δε τταντέλώς εξειρ^ασμενοι 
 ήσαν, [/cat] ή γτ} αυτούς μητηρ ούσα άνηκε, καϊ νυν Βεΐ 
 ώς ττερϊ μητρός καϊ τροφού της γωρας, εν η είσί, βούλεύε- 
 σθαί τε καϊ άμύνειν αυτούς, εάν τις εττ αύτην ϊη, καϊ ύττερ 
 τών άλλων ττόλιτών ώς άΒεΧφών όντων καϊ ηη^ενών Βιανοεΐ- 
 σθαι. Ουκ ετο9, εφη, ττάλαι ησ'χυνου το ΛίτευΒος λέγειν. 
 415 ΤΙάνυ, ην δ* εγώ, εΐκότως' αλλ* όμως άκουε καϊ το λοιττον 
 του μύθου, εστε μεν yap Βη ττάντες οι εν τη ττολει αδελ- 
 φοί, ώς φήσομεν ττρος αυτούς μυθολο^οΰντες, αλλ' ό θεός 
 Ίτλάττων, όσοι μεν υμών ικανοϊ άρ'χειν, -χ^ρυσον εν τη γενέσει 
 ξυνεμιξεν αύτοΐς, Βιο τιμιώτατοί εισιν • όσοι δ' εττίκουροι, 
 
 470 
 
THE MYTH OF THE EAKTH-BOKN 
 
 We must try, says Socrates, to invent a Noble Fiction for the 
 good of the People which we have distributed into the three 
 classes of Kulers, Soldiers, and Workmen — a Fiction which, 
 if possible, we must get the Kulers themselves to believe, but, 
 failing that, the other citizens. And let our Fiction eschew 
 novelty : let it be framed after the pattern of those Founda- 
 tion-Myths which the Poets have made familiar. I hardly 
 know how to recommend my story to the belief, first of the 
 Kulers, then of the Soldiers, and then of the other citizens — 
 it will be difi&cult, indeed, to get them to believe it ; yet, let 
 me make the venture — and tell them that "All the things 
 which they deemed were done unto them and came to pass 
 in their life, when we were bringing them up and instructing 
 them, were dreams, so to speak : all the while, in truth, 'twas 
 under the Earth, in her womb, that they were being fashioned 
 and nourished, and their arms and all their accoutrement 
 wrought. Then, when the making of them was fully accom- 
 plished, the Earth, which is their Mother, sent them forth ; 
 and now must they take good counsel concerning the Land 
 wherein they are as concerning a Mother and Nurse, and 
 must themselves defend her, if any come against her, and also 
 have regard unto all their fellow-citizens, as unto brethren 
 — children, along with themselves, of one Mother, even of 
 Earth." 
 
 We shall further say to them in pursuance of our 
 Myth : — 
 
 " All ye of this City are brethren : but God, when He 
 fashioned you, mingled gold in the nature of those of you who 
 were Able to Kule ; wheiefore are they the most precious : and 
 silver in the nature of the Soldiers : and iron and copper in 
 
 471 
 
472 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 apyvpov σίΒηρον Be καΐ 'χαΚκον τοΐζ τ€ γβωργοΓ? fcal τοις 
 άΧλοίς Βημιουρ^οΙς. are ουν ξνγγβνβΐς οντβς ττάντβς το μεν 
 
 Β ΤΓοΧύ ομοίους αν νμΐν αντοΐς yewtpTe, βστί δ' οτβ €κ γ^ρυσου 
 ^εννηθβίη αν apyvpovv καΐ έξ apyvpov 'χ^ρυσοϋν eKyovov 
 καΐ ταΧλα ττάντα οΰτως εξ όΧΚηΚων. τοις ουν άρ'χουσι, 
 καΐ ττρώτον καϊ μάλιστα irapayyeWeu 6 θεός, οττως μηΒενος 
 οΰτω φύλακες ayaQol έσονται μηΒ"* οΰτω σφοΒρα φυΧάξονσι 
 μηΒεν ώς τους εκy6voυς, 6 τί αύτοΐς τούτων εν ταΐς ψυχ^αΐς 
 τταραμεμικται, καϊ εάν τε σφετερος εκyovoς υττόγαλκος ή 
 
 C ύτΓοσίΒηρος yεvητaL•, μηΒενΙ τρόττω κατεΧεήσουσιν, άΧλα την 
 Tjj φύσει ττροσηκουσαν τιμήν άττοΒόντες ώσουσιν εις 
 Bημιoυpyoυς η εΙς yεωpyoύς, καϊ αν αΰ εκ τούτων τις 
 ύττόχ^ρυσος ή ϋlΓάpyυpoς φυτ], τιμησαντες άνάξουσι τους 
 μεν εις φυΧακην, τους Βε εις εττικουρίαν, ώς 'χ^ρησμοϋ οντος 
 τότε την ττόΧιν Βιαφθαρηναι, όταν αύτην ό σίΒηρος η ο 
 'χαΧκος φυΧάξη. τούτον ουν τον μυθον οττως αν ττεισθεΐεν, 
 εγεις τίνα μη'χρινην ; ΟύΒαμώς, εφη, οττως y αν αύτοΙ 
 
 D ούτοι* δττως μεντ αν οι τούτων υιεΐς καϊ οι εττειτα οί τ 
 αΧΚοι άνθρωποι οί ύστερον. Άλλα καϊ τούτο, ην δ* εγώ, 
 el• αν εγρι ττρος το μαΧλον αυτούς της ττόΧεώς τε καϊ 
 άΧΧήΧων κηΒεσθαΐ" σγεΒόν yap τι μανθάνω ο Xέyεις, 
 
THE MYTH OF THE EAETH-BORN 473 
 
 the Husbandmen and Craftsmen. Now, albeit that, for the 
 most part, ye will engender children like unto their parents, 
 yet, inasmuch as ye are all of one kindred, it will sometimes 
 come to pass that from gold silver will be brought forth, and 
 from silver, golden offspring — yea, from any sort, any other. 
 And this is the first and chief est commandment which God 
 giveth unto the Rulers, that they be Watchmen indeed, and 
 watch naught else so diligently as the issue of children, to see 
 which of these metals is mingled in their Souls : and if a child 
 of theirs have aught of copper or iron in him, they shall in 
 no wise have pity upon him, but shall award unto him the 
 place meet for his nature, and thrust him forth unto the 
 Craftsmen or Husbandmen ; whereas, if there be any one born 
 among these with gold or silver in him, they shall take account 
 of this, and lead him up unto the place of the Watchmen, 
 or unto the place of the Soldiers; for hath not the Oracle 
 declared that the City will be destroyed in the day that Iron 
 or Copper shall keep watch ? " 
 
 This is the Myth. How are we to get them to believe 
 it ? The generation to whom it is first told cannot possibly 
 believe it; but the next may, and the generations after. 
 Thus the Public Good may be served, after all, by our Noble 
 Fiction. 
 
474 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 KoTE ON THE Myth of the Earth-born 
 
 The three metals of this Myth must be taken in connection 
 with the doctrine of Hesiod {O.D. 9 7 ff.) ; for which the reader 
 is referred to the section on Daemones among the Observations 
 on the Discourse of Diotima.^ 
 
 With regard to the fancy which inspires the Myth — the 
 fancy that " our youth was a dream " — I would only remark 
 that Plato seems to me here to appeal to an experience which 
 is by no means uncommon in childhood — to the feeling that 
 the things here are doubles of things elsewhere. The produc- 
 tion of this feeling in his adult patient has been dwelt on ^ as 
 one of the chief means by which the Poet effects the purpose 
 of his art. 
 
 ^ Pages 434 if. supra. ^ Pages 34, 384 fF. sicpra. 
 
THE MYTHOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS OF THE 
 CAMBEIDGE PLATONISTS 
 
 The purpose of this Concluding Part is to show that 
 Alexandrine Platonism, indebted for its chief tenets to the 
 mythology of the Timaeus, Fhaedrus Myth, and Discourse of 
 Diotima, has been, and still is, an important influence in 
 Modern Philosophy. 
 
 Our chief concern will be with the " Cambridge Platonists " 
 of the seventeenth century ; but we shall keep a watchful eye 
 throughout upon their successors, the English Idealists of the 
 present day. 
 
 Before we consider the central doctrine of the Cambridge 
 Platonists and compare it with that of the English Idealists 
 of the present day, we must try to realise the environment of 
 the former. It was, in one word, " academic." That, in the 
 seventeenth century, meant "theological." Their paramount 
 interest was in Theology. They brought to the cultivation of 
 Theology, first, classical, patristic, and rabbinical learning, and 
 secondly, physical science, Cartesian — and Newtonian, if I may 
 be allowed so to call the reformed science which was already 
 all but ripe for Newton's great discovery. 
 
 With regard to their Learning: — It was that of the 
 Kenaissance, i.e. Platonic, not Aristotelian. The learning of 
 the medieval Church had been Aristotelian; and the great 
 Myth of that Church, the Divina Commedia, sprang into life 
 out of the ashes of Aristotelianism. Antagonism to the 
 Koman Church had, doubtless, much to do with the Platonic 
 revival, which spread from Italy. Ficino, the great Florentine 
 Platonist, took the place of Thomas Aquinas, and is the 
 authority the Cambridge Matonists are always found appeal- 
 ing to. Their Platonism, moreover, was that of Plato the 
 
 475 
 
476 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 mythologist, not that of Plato the dialectician ; that is, it was 
 Alexandrine Platonism which attracted them, especially as 
 its doctrine had been used by Philo to interpret the Old 
 Testament, and by Origen and other Fathers to set forth 
 the philosophy of the Christian mysteries, on lines common 
 to them with Plotinus. 
 
 Philo, whose method of exegesis has been referred to in 
 the section on Allegory,^ never thought of doubting that 
 Platonism and the Jewish Scriptures had real afi&nity to each 
 other, and hardly perhaps asked himself how the affinity was 
 to be accounted for ; but the English Platonists, imitators of 
 his exegetical method, felt themselves obliged to satisfy doubts 
 and answer questions. To make good the applicability of the 
 Platonic philosophy to the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures, 
 they felt, with Aristobulus and Numenius,^ that it was 
 important to be able to show that Plato was Moses Atticus. 
 In the Preface to his Conjectwra Cabhalistica^ or a Conjectural 
 Essay of interpreting the mind of Moses in the three first 
 Chapters of Genesis, according to a threefold Cahhala, viz., 
 literal, philosophical, mystical, or divinely moral (1662), Dr. 
 Henry More writes (p. 3) : — 
 
 Moses seems to have been aforehand, and prevented the subtilest 
 and abstrusest inventions of the choicest philosophers that ever 
 appeared after him to this very day. And further presumption 
 of the truth of this Philosophical Cabbala is that the grand mysteries 
 therein contained are most- what the same that those two eximious 
 philosophers, Pythagoras and Plato, brought out of Egypt, and the 
 parts of Asia, into Europe, and it is generally acknowledged by 
 Christians that they both had their philosophy from Moses. And 
 Numenius the Platonist speaks out plainly concerning his master : 
 What is Plato but Moses Atticus? And for Pythagoras, it is a 
 thing incredible that he and his followers should make such a 
 deal of doe with the mystery of Numbers, had he not been 
 favoured with a sight of Moses his creation of the world in six 
 days, and had the Philosophick Cabbala thereof communicated to 
 him, which mainly consists in Numbers. 
 
 Again in the same work (ch. iii. § 3, p. 100) he writes : — 
 
 ^ Papjes 234 if. supra. 
 
 2 Aristobulus asserted the existence of a much older translation of the Law 
 from which Plato and the Greeks stole their philosophy. Numenius is the 
 author of the phrase Μωϋσης άττικίξ'ων : see Dr. Bigg's Christian Platonists of 
 Alexandria, p. 6. 
 
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 477 
 
 That Pythagoras was acquainted with the Mosaical or Jewish 
 Philosophy, there is ample testimony of it in writers ; as of 
 Aristobulus an Egyptian Jew in Clemens Alexandrinus, and 
 Josephus against Appion. S. Ambrose adds that he was a Jew 
 himself. Clemens calls him τον ίξ ^Εβραίων φιλόσοφον, the 
 Hebrew Philosopher. I might cast hither the suffrages of Justin 
 Martyr, Johannes Philoponus, Theodoret, Hermippus in Origen 
 against Celsus, Porphyrins, and Clemens again, who writes that it 
 was a common fame that Pythagoras was a disciple of the Prophet 
 Ezekiel. And though he gives no belief to the report, yet that 
 learned antiquary Mr. Selden seems inclinable enough to think it 
 true. . . . Besides all these, lamblichus also affirms that he lived 
 at Sidon his native country, where he fell acquainted with the 
 Prophets and Successors of one Mochus the Physiologer or Natural 
 Philosopher — σνν^βαλζ tols Μώ^ου του φνσωλόγον 7Γροφηταί<^ 
 άπoγόvoLs' which, as Mr Selden judiciously conjectures, is to be 
 read rots Μωσ^ω? κ.τ.λ. . . . wherefore it is very plain that 
 Pythagoras had his Philosophy from Moses . . . and now I have 
 said this much of Pythagoras, there will be less need to insist 
 upon Plato and Plotinus, their Philosophy being the same that 
 Pythagoras's was, and so alike applicable to Moses his text. 
 
 So much, by way of specimen, to indicate the kind of 
 evidence by which Plato is proved to be Moses Atticus. The 
 proof, as managed by both More and Cudworth, calls into 
 requisition a vast amount of uncritical learning. One has ta 
 read these learned lucubrations to estimate the revolution 
 wrought by Bentley. 
 
 One of the oddest results of the desire of the Cambridge 
 Platonists to show the derivation of Pythagoreanism and 
 Platonism from the Mosaic philosophy was the thesis main- 
 tained by them that the Mosaic philosophy was an atomistic 
 system — a system which Pythagoras and Plato borrowed and 
 kept in comparative purity, but which Democritus (the 
 Hobbes of antiquity — see Cudworth, Intellectual System, vol. i. 
 p. 276, ed. Mosheim and Harrison) corrupted into atheism. 
 The true Mosaic atomism, or physical science, was of such a 
 nature as to make it necessary to postulate God as source of 
 motion ; whereas Democritus and modern materialists explain 
 everything by blind mechanical principles. But why this 
 desire to make out the true philosophy — that of Moses and 
 the Greeks who retainect the Mosaic tradition — atomistic ? 
 Because the Cartesian natural philosophy was " atomistic," i.e^ 
 
478 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 mathematical and mechanical. This was the natural philo- 
 sophy in vogue — the natural philosophy which was reforming 
 Physics and Astronomy, and was about to bring forth Newton. 
 It need not surprise us, then, if we look at the matter atten- 
 tively, that these alumni of Cambridge wished to show that 
 Moses taught — allegorically, it is true — the Cartesian or 
 mechanical philosophy. It was as if theologians of our own 
 day were anxious to show that the account of the Creation in 
 Genesis, or, if that would be too paradoxical, belief in a Special 
 Providence, is compatible with Darwinism. It is true that 
 More and Cudworth, especially the latter, are not entirely 
 satisfied with the Cartesian theology, although they accept the 
 Cartesian mathematical physics as giving a correct explanation 
 of natural phenomena. It was indeed " atomism " in its 
 genuine Mosaic form which Descartes revived, not the 
 atheistic Democritean atomism ; for he posits an " Immaterial 
 Substance " ; but he leaves this Substance, as First Principle, 
 too little to do. While recognising immaterial cogitative 
 substance as distinct from extended material substance, he 
 falls into the error of identifying cogitative substance entirely 
 with consciousness, and for the " plastic soul " — a spiritual or 
 immaterial, though non-conscious, principle in Nature — he 
 substitutes blind " mechanism," thus depriving theology of the 
 argument from design. This is the gist of a remarkable 
 criticism of Descartes which occurs in Cudworth's Intellectual 
 System, vol. i. pp. 275, 276. It is well worth reading in 
 connection with criticism of the same tendency to be met with 
 in such modern books as Professor Ward's Naturalism and 
 Agnosticism. 
 
 More, in a notable passage in the Preface General to his 
 Collected Works (1662), speaks of Platonism as the soul, and 
 Cartesianism as the body, of the philosophy which he applies 
 to the interpretation of the Text of Moses. This philosophy 
 is the old Jewish-Pythagorean Cabbala, which teaches the 
 motion of the Earth and the Pre-existence of the Soul. The 
 motion of the Earth as Mosaic doctrine he discusses in the 
 sixth chapter of his Appendix to the Defence of the Philo- 
 sophick Cahbala (p. 126), and the passage in which he deals 
 with an objection against ascribing the doctrine to Moses may 
 be noted as an instructive specimen of the method of these 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 479 
 
 Cambridge Platonists. The objection — a suJBftciently formid- 
 able one on the face of it — is that the doctrine does not 
 appear in the Mosaic writings. More takes up the bold 
 position that, although the doctrine of " the motion of the 
 Earth has been lost and appears not in the remains of the 
 Jewish Cabbala, this can be no argument against its once 
 having been a part thereof." 
 
 Though the fame of this part of the Cabbala (he says) be 
 in a manner extinct among the Jews, yet that it was once the 
 hidden doctrine of the learned of that nation seems to me 
 sufficiently credible from what Plutarch writes of Numa Pompilius. 
 For his so strictly prohibiting the use of images in divine worship 
 is very apparently Mosaical . . . and Numa's instructor is said to 
 be not a Grecian but βάρβαρος tls βζλτίων ΐίνθαγόρον, some 
 Barbarian greater and better than Pythagoras himself; and 
 where, I pray you, was such an one to be found, unless descended 
 from the Jews ? ... It seems exceedingly probable from all these 
 circumstances that Numa was both descended from the Jews and 
 imbued with the Jewish religion and learning. What's this to 
 the purpose ? or how does it prove the motion of the Earth once 
 to have been part of the Judaical Tradition or Cabbala ? Only 
 thus much : that Numa . . . knowing there was no such august 
 temple of God as the Universe itself, and that to all the inhabitants 
 thereof it cannot but appear round from every prospect, and that 
 in the midst there must be an ever-shining Fire, I mean the Sun ; 
 in imitation hereof he built a round temple, which was called the 
 temple of Yesta, concerning which Plutarch speaks plainly and 
 apertly, " That Numa is reported to have built a round temple of 
 Vesta for the custody of a fire in the midst thereof that was never 
 to go out : not imitating herein the figure of the Earth, as if she 
 was the Yesta, but of the Universe; in the midst whereof the 
 Pythagoreans placed the Fire, and called it Yesta or Monas, and 
 reckoned the Earth neither immovable, nor in the midst of the 
 Mundane Compasse, but that it is carried about the Fire or Sun, 
 and is none of the first and chief elements of the World." What 
 can be more plain than these testimonies 1 
 
 The learning of the Cambridge Platonists, of which the 
 above passage enables us to take the measure, is expended in 
 two main directions, pointed out by Philo and by Plotinus 
 respectively. Philo was their master in Scriptural exegesis 
 — the exegesis by which dogma was established (although 
 Plotinus, too, helped thenf here, especially with regard to the 
 doctrine of the Trinity) ; but Plotinus was especially their 
 
480 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 master in what concerned devotional religion. It would be 
 tedious to quote passages in which they employ Philo's 
 exegetical method (already illustrated in another part of this 
 work) in order to establish dogma : it will be sufficient merely 
 to mention More's Philosophick Cdbhala, ch. 1, his Defence of 
 the Philosophick Cabhala, ch. 1, Cudworth's Intellectual System 
 of the Universe, vol. ii. p. 366 and p. 406 (ed. Mosheim and 
 Harrison), and Norris's Reason and Religion (1689), pp. 
 133, 134; but a few words respecting the aids to devotion 
 which they derived from their Cablala may not be out of 
 place here. 
 
 First, it is to be observed that ecstasy was the general 
 form in which they tended to envisage religious devotion ; 
 and here, doubtless, Plotinus was their model. The ecstasy 
 of Plotinus is an obscure phenomenon, probably deserving the 
 attention of the physiologist as well as of the theologian ; ^ it 
 will be enough, by way of indicating its nature, to refer to 
 Cudworth, who quotes ^ a well-known passage in Porphyry's 
 Life of his friend and master Plotinus : — 
 
 And that we may here give a taste of the mystical theology and 
 enthusiasm of these Platonists too, Porphyrius in his Life of 
 Plotinus affirmeth, that both Plotinus and himself had sometimes 
 experience of a kind of ecstatic union with the first of these three 
 gods [Cudworth here refers to the Platonic Trinity], that which 
 is above mind and understanding : " Plotinus often endeavouring 
 to raise up his mind to the first and highest God, that God some- 
 times appeared to him, who hath neither form nor idea, but is 
 placed above intellect, and all that is intelligible; to whom Γ 
 Porphyrius affirm myself to have been once united in the sixty- 
 eighth year of my age." And again afterwards : " Plotinus' chief 
 aim and scope was to be united to and conjoined with the Supreme 
 God, who is above all ; which scope he attained unto four several 
 times, whilst myself was with him, by a certain ineffable energy." 
 That is, Plotinus aimed at such a kind of rapturous and ecstatic 
 union with the rh L•, and τάγα(9οι/, " the first of the three highest 
 gods " (called the One and the Good), as by himself is described 
 towards the latter end of this last book (Enn. vi. 9), where he 
 calls it €7Γαφήν, and τταρονσίαν ίπιχττημης κρείττονα, and το εαυτών 
 KCVTpov τω οίον πάντων κίντρψ συνάτΓτειν, "a kind of tactual 
 
 ^ For modern cases I would refer to Professor James's Varieties of Religious 
 Experience (1902). 
 
 2 Intell. System, ii. 315, 316. 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 481 
 
 union," and " a certain presence better than knowledge," and " the 
 joining of our own centre, as it were, with the centre of the 
 universe." 
 
 This doctrine, or rather practice, of ecstasy, especially 
 identified with the name of Plotinus, appeals strongly to the 
 English Platonists, who understand it, however, not as a 
 mysterious trance, but as a " Holy Life," ecstatic in the sense 
 of being dead to the flesh and the vanities of the world. 
 Death to the flesh and the world is secured by — nay consists 
 in,^ Contemplation of the glorious and lovable nature of God. 
 " The highest and last term of Contemplation," says Norris,^ 
 " is the Divine Essence. Whence it follows necessarily that 
 the mind which sees the Divine Essence must be totally and 
 thoroughly absolved from all commerce with the corporeal 
 senses, either by Death or some ecstatical and rapturous 
 Abstraction. So true is that which God said to Moses, Thou 
 canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me, and 
 live." Similarly, John Smith, in his Discourse on " The true 
 way or method of attaining Divine knowledge," speaks of 
 a good Life as the ττρόΧηψι^; or Fundamental Principle of 
 Divine Science : " If any man will do his will, he shall know 
 the doctrine, whether it be of God." 
 
 "Were I indeed to define Divinity, I should rather call it a 
 Divine Life, than a Divine Science \ it being something rather to be 
 understood by a Spiritual Sensation, than by any verbal descrip- 
 tion."^ . . . "Divinity is not so well perceived by a subtile wit, 
 ώσ7Γ€/ο αίσθήσ-ζί KeKadap^kvy, as by a purified sense, as Plotinus 
 phraseth it." * . . . " The Platonists . . . thought the minds of 
 men could never be purged enough from those earthly dregs of 
 Sense and Passion, in which they were so much steeped, before 
 they could be capable of their divine metaphysics-, and therefore 
 they so much solicit a γωρΐ(τμο<ζ άττο τον σώ/Αατο?, a separation 
 from the Body, in all those who would καθαρώς φιλοσοφύν, 
 sincerely understand Divine Truth ; for that was the scope of 
 their Philosophy. This was also intimated by them in defining 
 Philosophy to be ρ^λ^τη θάνατον, a meditation of Death; aiming 
 herein at only a moral way of dying, by loosening the Soul from 
 
 1 Cf. Aristotle, E. N. x. 8. 8. 1178 b 32, είη &v η ευδαιμονία Θεωρία rts. 
 
 2 Reason and Religion (1689), p. 3. It is a book "of a devotional nature 
 written for the use and benefit of the Learned Reader," "whose Heart may want 
 as much to be inflamed as the Qi;her's Head [i.e. the head of the unlearned 
 person for whose use devotional books are mostly written] does to be instructed." 
 
 3 Smith's Select Discourses (1660), p. 2. * o.c. p. 10. 
 
 2i 
 
482 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 the Body and this Sensitive life . . . and therefore, besides those 
 aperat καθαρτικαί by which the Souls of men were to be separated 
 from Sensuality . . . they devised a further way of separation 
 . . . which was their Mathemata, or mathematical contemplations 
 . . . besides many other ways they had, whereby to rise out of 
 this dark body ; άναβάσ-βις ίκ τον σπηλαίου, several steps and 
 ascents out of this miry cave of mortality, before they could set 
 any sure footing with their intellectual part in the Land of Light 
 and Immortal Being." ^ "The Priests of Mercury, as Plutarch 
 tells us, in the eating of their holy things, were wont to cry out 
 γλυκύ ή άλήθαα, Sweet is Truth. But how sweet and delicious 
 that Truth is which holy and heaven-born Souls feed upon in their 
 mysterious converses with the Deity, who can tell but they that 
 taste it ? When Reason once is raised by the mighty force of the 
 Divine Spirit into a converse with God, it is turned into Sense : 
 that which before was only Faith well built upon sure principles 
 (for such our Science may be) now becomes Vision. AVe shall then 
 converse with God τω νω, whereas before we conversed with him 
 only rrj διάνοια, with our Discursive faculty, as the Platonists were 
 wont to distinguish. Before we laid hold on him only λόγφ 
 ατΓοδεικτικω, with a struggling, agonistical, and contentious Eeason, 
 hotly combating with difficulties and sharp contests of diverse 
 opinions, and labouring in it self in its deductions of one thing 
 from another; we shall then fasten our minds upon him λογ(^ 
 άτΓοφαντίκω, with such a serene understanding, yaXrivy voepa, such 
 an intellectual calmness and serenity as will present us with a 
 blissful, steady, and invariable sight of him." 2 
 
 It may perhaps be thought that in the foregoing passage 
 Smith oversteps a little the line which divides " ecstasy " as 
 " Holy Life " from " ecstasy " as temporary state of exalted 
 religious feeling ; and perhaps in the following passage too, 
 from his Discourse of the Immortality of the Soul, he may be 
 thought to commit the same fault; yet the passage seems 
 to me to contain what is so valuable for our understanding 
 of the influence of Platonism — as mythological, rather than 
 logical system — on present-day religious thought, that I 
 venture to transcribe it, together with the notable quotation 
 from Plotinus included in it : — 
 
 Though in our contentious pursuits after science, we cast 
 Wisdom, Power, Eternity, Goodness, and the like into several 
 
 1 o.c. pp. 10, 11. 
 
 '^ o.c. pp. 16, 17. This and the foregoing quotations are all from the 
 Discourse concerning the True Way or Method of attaining to Divine Knowledge. 
 
THE CAMBEIDGE PLATONISTS 483 
 
 formalities, so that we may trace down Science in a constant chain 
 of Deductions ; yet in our naked Intuitions and Visions of them, 
 we clearly discern that Goodness and Wisdom lodge together. 
 Justice and Mercy kiss each other : and all these and whatsoever 
 pieces else the cracked glasses of our Reasons may sometime 
 break Divine and Intelligible Being into, are fast knit up together 
 in the invincible bonds of Eternity. And in this sense is that 
 notion of Proclus descanting upon Plato's riddle of the Soul ώ§ 
 -γζννητη καΧ άγίννητος, as if it were generated and yet not generated, 
 to be understood ; ^/aovos ά/χα και αιών irepl την ψνχήν, the Soul 
 partaking of Time in its broken and particular conceptions and 
 apprehensions, and of Eternity in its Comprehensive and Stable 
 Contemplations. I need not say that when the Soul is once got 
 up to the top of this bright Olympus, it will then no more doubt 
 of its own Immortality, or fear any Dissipation, or doubt whether 
 any drowsy sleep shall hereafter seize upon it : no, it will then 
 feel itself grasping fast and safely its own Immortality, and view 
 itself in the Horizon of Eternity. In such sober kind of ecstasies 
 did Plotinus find his own Soul separated from his body ..." I 
 being often awakened into a sense of my self, and being 
 sequestered from my body, and betaking myself from all things 
 else into my self ; what admirable beauty did I then behold." . . . 
 But here we must use some caution, lest we should arrogate too 
 much to the power of our own Souls, which indeed cannot raise 
 up themselves into that pure and steady contemplation of true 
 Being ; but will rather act with some multiplicity or €Τ€ρότψ (as 
 they speak) attending it. But thus much of its high original 
 may appear to us, that it can correct itself for dividing and disjoin- 
 ing therein, as knowing all to be every way one most entire and 
 simple. . . . We shall add but this one thing further to clear the 
 Soul's Immortality, and it is indeed that which breeds a true sense 
 of it — viz.. True and real goodness. Our highest speculations of the 
 Soul may beget a sufficient conviction thereof within us, but yet 
 it is only True Goodness and Virtue in the Souls of men that can 
 make them both kn^w and love, believe and delight themselves in 
 their own Immortality. Though every good man is not so logically 
 subtile as to be able by fit mediums to demonstrate his own 
 Immortality, yet he sees it in a higher light : his Soul being 
 purged and enlightened by true Sanctity is more capable of those 
 divine irradiations, whereby it feels itself in conjunction with 
 God, and by a σ-ννανγαα (as the Greeks speak), the Light of divine 
 goodness mixing itself with the light of its own Reason, sees more 
 clearly not only that it may, if it please the Supreme Deity, of 
 its own nature exist eternally, but also that it shall do so. . . . 
 It is indeed nothing else tlat makes men question the Immor- 
 tality of their Souls, so much as their own base and earthly loves, 
 
484 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 which first makes them wish their Souls were not immortal, and 
 then think they are not ; which Plotinus hath well observed and 
 accordingly hath soberly pursued this argument : . . . " Let us 
 now (saith he, Έηη. iv. 7. 10) consider a Soul, not such a one as 
 is immersed into the Body . . . but such a one as hath cast 
 away Concupiscence and Anger and other Passions. . . . Such 
 a one as this will sufficiently manifest that all Vice is un- 
 natural to the Soul, and something acquired only from abroad, 
 and that the best Wisdom and all other Virtues lodge in a purged 
 Soul, as being allied to it. If, therefore, such a Soul shall reflect 
 upon itself, how shall it not appear to itself to be of such a kind 
 of nature as Divine and Eternal Essences are ? For Wisdom and 
 true Virtue being Divine Effluxes can never enter into any 
 unhallowed and mortal thing : it must, therefore, needs be Divine, 
 seeing it is filled with a Divine nature Sia crvyyeveLav καΐ rh 
 ομοονσ-ίον, by its kindred and consanguinity therewith. . . . Con- 
 template, therefore, the Soul of man, denuding it of all that which 
 itself is not, or let him that does this, view his own Soul ; then 
 he will believe it to be immortal, when he shall behold it €v τφ 
 νοητά καΐ iv T(f καθαρψ, fixed in an Intelligible and pure nature ; 
 he shall then behold his own intellect contemplating not any 
 sensible thing, but eternal things, with that which is eternal, that 
 is, with itself, looking into the intellectual world, being itself 
 made all lucid, intellectual, and shining with Sun-beams of eternal 
 Truth, borrowed from the First Good, which perpetually rayeth 
 forth his Truth upon all intellectual beings. One thus qualified 
 may seem without any arrogance to take up that saying of 
 Empedocles, χαίρετ, Ιγώ δ' νμΐν θίος άμβροτοζ — Farewell all 
 earthly allies, I am henceforth no mortal wight, but an immortal 
 angel, ascending up into Divinity, and reflecting upon that likeness 
 of it which I find in myself. When true Sanctity and Purity 
 shall ground him in the knowledge of divine things, then shall the 
 inward sciences that arise from the bottom of his own Soul display 
 themselves ; which, indeed, are the only true sciences ; for the 
 Soul runs not out of itself to behold Temperance and Justice 
 abroad, but its own light sees them in the contemplation of its 
 own being and that divine essence which was before enshrined 
 within itself." ^ 
 
 So much for Smith's presentation of the " Idea of Soul " ; 
 it owes its main features to the doctrine of βρως and άνάμνησις 
 set forth in the Phaedrus Myth ; and the " regulative " value 
 of the " Idea " is finely appreciated. The regulative value of 
 the " Idea of God " is as finely appreciated in the Discourse of 
 
 ^ ox. pp. 99-105. 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 486 
 
 the Existence and Nature of God, where he says/ " God is not 
 better defined to us by our understandings than by our wills 
 and affections" and notes ^ the pre-eminence, in Platonism, of 
 TO αηαθόν, which begets in us το ερωτίκον ττάθος. Similarly, 
 in his Discourse of the Jewish Notion of a Legal Righteousness, 
 he contrasts the doctrine of "Works set forth by the rabbinical 
 writers with the Christian doctrine of Faith, and shows that 
 the latter amounts to a doctrine of " divine grace and bounty 
 as the only source of righteousness and happiness." St. Paul's 
 doctrine of " Justification by Faith " is to be explained pla- 
 tonically as ομοίωσις τω θεω. It is the justification of a sancti- 
 fied nature — a nature which, by the grace of God, has been 
 made a partaker of His life and strength. In Faith there is 
 a true conjunction and union of the Souls of men with God, 
 whereby they are made capable of true blessedness. " The Law 
 is merely an external thing consisting in precepts which have 
 only an outward administration" — it is the Βίακονία αγράμματος 
 καΐ θανάτου : but " the administration of the Gospel is intrin- 
 sical and vital in living impressions upon the Souls of men " 
 — it is the BcaKovia ττνεύματος.^ " By which," he argues in 
 a significant passage,* " the Apostle (2 Cor. iii. 6, 7) cannot 
 mean the History of the Gospel, or those credenda propounded 
 to us to believe ; for this would make the Gospel itself as 
 much an external thing as the Law was, and according to the 
 external administration as much a killing or dead letter as 
 the Law was. . . . But, indeed, he means a vital efflux from God 
 upon the Souls of men, whereby they are made partakers of 
 Life and Strength from Him." 
 
 I doubt we are too nice Logicians sometimes in distinguishing 
 between the Glory of God and our own Salvation. We cannot in a 
 true sense seek our own Salvation more than the Glory of God, 
 which triumphs most and discovers itself most effectually in the 
 salvation of Souls ; for indeed this salvation is nothing else but a 
 true participation of the Divine Nature. Heaven is not a thing 
 without us, nor is Happiness anything distinct from a true con- 
 junction of the mind with God in a secret feeling of his goodness 
 and reciprocation of affection to him, wherein the Divine Glory 
 most unfolds itself. ... To love God above ourselves is not indeed 
 so properly to love him ahov^ the salvation of our Souls, as if these 
 
 1 o.c. p. 137. 2 o.c. p. 139. » ^c. p. 311. * o.c. p. 312. 
 
486 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 were distinct things ; but it is to love him above all our own sinful 
 affections, and above our particular Beings. . . . We cannot be com- 
 pletely blessed till the Idea boni, or the Ipsum Bonum, which is 
 God, exercise its sovereignty over all the faculties of our Souls, 
 rendering them as like to itself as may consist with their proper 
 capacity.^ 
 
 I have quoted Smith at considerable length, that the 
 reader may appreciate the place of the Platonist . doctrine, or 
 rather άσκησις, of " ecstasy " in the Life and Philosophy of the 
 Cambridge school. It would be easy to quote similar passages 
 from Cudworth, More, and Norris ; but Smith seems to me to 
 " keep his head " better than the others in the intoxicating 
 Neo-Platonic atmosphere, and, moreover, to present " ecstasy " 
 in a form which can be more easily recognised as connecting 
 link between the doctrine of βρως and άνάμνησις set forth in 
 the Phaedrus Myth and the doctrine of the " Presence of the 
 Eternal Consciousness in my Consciousness," which meets us 
 in the Epistemology and Ethics of T. H, Green and his school. 
 
 Leaving the learning of the Cambridge Platonists, let us 
 now look at their science. Their science was Cartesian — that 
 is, it was physics and astronomy treated mathematically, 
 according to mechanical principles, the application of which 
 by Copernicus and Galileo, in the latter branch, had already 
 overthrown the Aristotelian tradition, and produced an intellec- 
 tual revolution, which can be compared only with that which 
 Darwinism has produced in our own day. Natural science 
 has always been influential in England in giving impulse to 
 Philosophy, and even to Theology. Locke's Essay was occa- 
 sioned and inspired by the activity of the Eoyal Society ; 
 Berkeley's Idealism found expression in a monograph on the 
 physiology of vision ; and it was not by mere accident that 
 the University of Newton was the alma mater of the English 
 Platonists. 
 
 They received the new astronomy with enthusiasm. They 
 were inspired by it. Like Xenophanes, they looked up at the 
 Heavens and said, " The One is God." ^ " One great Order " 
 and " Infinite Space " are the scientific ideas which dominate 
 
 ^ o.c. pp. 410, 411, from "Discourse of the Excellency and Nobleness of 
 True Religion." 
 
 2 Arist. Met. A 5. 986 b 24, e^s rbv oKov ovpavbv άττοβλέψαζ το ^v elvai φ-ησι. 
 τόν θών. 
 
THE CAMBEIDGE PLATONISTS 487 
 
 Cudworth and his friends, and bring conviction to their belief 
 — otherwise established by the authority of revelation and 
 Platonic philosophy — in a " Governor of the Universe," a 
 " Perfect and Infinite Being," a God who, in Plato's moral 
 phrase, is " The Good," and yet, in scientific sense, may not 
 unfitly be conceived spatially — as by Cudworth, in a strange 
 passage : ^ — 
 
 It is certain that there can be no mode, accident, or affection 
 of Nothing; and consequently, that nothing cannot be extended 
 nor measurable. But if space be neither the extension of body, 
 nor yet of substance incorporeal, then must it of necessity be the 
 extension of nothing, and the afi'ection of nothing; and nothing 
 must be measurable by yards and poles. We conclude, therefore, 
 that from this very hypothesis of the Democritic and Epicurean 
 Atheists, that space is a nature distinct from body, and positively 
 infinite, it follows undeniably that there must be some incorporeal 
 substance whose aff'ection its extension is, and because there can 
 be nothing infinite but only the Deity, that it is the infinite exten- 
 sion of an incorporeal Deity. 
 
 To this strange passage let me append some stanzas from 
 More's FhilosophicJcall Poems, which show how the Copernican 
 astronomy impressed his imagination — how the centrality of 
 the Platonic αηαθόν in the intelligible world seemed to him to 
 be imaged by the centrality of the Sun in the visible world. 
 He has been speaking of the " stiff standers for ag'd Ptolemee," 
 and proceeds : ^ — 
 
 But let them bark like band-dogs at the moon 
 That mindless passeth on in silencie : 
 I'll take my flight above this outward Sunne, 
 Regardless of such fond malignitie. 
 Lift my self up in the Theologie 
 Of heavenly Plato. There I'll contemplate 
 The Arch type of this Sunne, that bright Idee 
 Of steddie Good, that doth his beams dilate 
 Through all the worlds, all lives and beings propagate. 
 
 One steddy Good, centre of Essences, 
 Unmoved Monad, that Apollo hight, 
 The Intellectual Sunne whose energies 
 Are all things that appear in vital hght, 
 
 — * ' 
 
 ^ Intellectual System, vol. iii. p. 232 (ed. Mosheim and Harrison). 
 2 Psychozoia, or Life of the Soul, pp. 157 flf. 
 
488 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Whose brightness passeth every creature's sight. 
 Yet round about him, stird with gentle fire, 
 All things do dance ; their being, action, might, 
 They thither do direct with strong desire. 
 To embosom him with close embracements they aspire. 
 
 Unseen, incomprehensible, He moves 
 About himself each seeking entity 
 That never yet shall find that which it loves. 
 No finite thing shall reach infinity. 
 No thing dispers'd comprehend that Unity ; 
 Yet in their ranks they seemly foot it round. 
 Trip it with joy at the world's harmony. 
 Struck with the pleasure of an amorous stound. 
 So dance they with fair floΛvers from unknown root y-crowned. 
 
 Still falling short they never fail to seek. 
 Nor find they nothing by their diligence ; 
 They find repast, their lively longings eek 
 Rekindled still, by timely influence. 
 Thus all things in distinct circumference 
 Move about Him that satisfies them all ; 
 Nor be they thus stird up by wary sense 
 Or foresight, or election rational 1, 
 But blindly reel about the Heart of Lives centrall. 
 
 So doth the Earth, one of the erring seven. 
 Wheel round the fixed Sunne, that is the shade 
 Of steddy Good, shining in this Out-heaven 
 With the rest of those starres that God hath made 
 Of baser matter, all which he array'd 
 With his far-shining light. They sing for joy. 
 They frisque about in circulings unstay'd. 
 Dance through the liquid air, and nimbly toy, 
 While Sol keeps clear the sprite, consumes what may accloy. 
 
 The centre of each severall World's a Sunne 
 With shining beams and kindly warming heat. 
 About whose radiant crown the Planets runne, 
 Like reeling moths around a candle light. 
 These all together one World I conceit. 
 And that even infinite such worlds there be, 
 That unexhausted Good that God is hight 
 A full sufficient reason is to me. 
 Who simple Goodnesse make the highest Deity. 
 
 The mathematical physics of Descartes and the Copernican 
 astronomy were welcomed with joy by the Cambridge Platonists, 
 as afifording a far better "Argument from Design" for the 
 
THE CAMBEIDGE PLATONISTS 489 
 
 existence of God than had been afforded by the Ptolemaic 
 System, which, with its cumbrous commentary of Epicycles, 
 called the mind away from the wisdom of the Creator to the 
 ingenuity of man. The Copernican astronomy, by taking the 
 fixed stars out of the solid sphere in which the Ptolemaic 
 astronomy held them fast, and showing them to be central 
 suns round which, as round the sun of our system, planets 
 revolve in liquid aether, forces on us the thought that there is 
 an infinity of such solar systems, or worlds, not a rounded-off 
 universe, beyond whose flammantia moenia there is mere 
 nothingness. " The infinity of worlds " was accepted as proof 
 of the existence of an infinite, omnipresent Deity, an Incor- 
 poreal Principle — a circle " whose centre is everywhere, and 
 circumference nowhere." ^ A " finite universe " would be an 
 argument for a " Corporeal Deity." This is why the Cam- 
 bridge Platonists are so anxious to show that the Pytha- 
 goreans and Platonists held, with Moses, the doctrine of the 
 motion of the Earth. " Modern Science " had convinced them 
 that this was the only doctrine consistent with a spiritual 
 philosophy. 
 
 The profound theological influence which the vast prospect 
 opened up by the reformed astronomy exercised over the minds 
 of men in the seventeenth century cannot be better brought 
 home to us than by a passage in which Newton himself puts 
 his own theological belief on record : ^ — 
 
 The six Primary Planets revolve round the Sun in circles 
 concentrical to the Sun, with the same direction of their motion, 
 and very nearly in the same Plane. The moons (or secondary 
 planets) revolve round the Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, with the 
 same direction of their motion, and very nearly in the plane of 
 the orbs of the planets. And all these regular motions have not 
 their rise from mechanical causes, seeing the comets are carried in 
 orbs very eccentrical, and that very freely through all parts of 
 the Heavens. . . . This most elegant system of planets and 
 comets could not be produced but by and under the Contrivance 
 and Dominion of an Intelligent and powerful Being. And, if the 
 fixed stars are the centres of such other systems, all these, being 
 framed by the like counsel, will be subject to the dominion of 
 One ; especially seeing the Light of the fixed stars is of the same 
 
 ^ More's Philosophickall PoemJf notes, p. 409. 
 
 ^ Scholium generate at the end of the Friiicipia. I avail myself of Maxwell's 
 translation in his edition of Cumberland's Laws of Nature. 
 
490 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 nature with that of the Sun, and the Light of all these systems 
 passes mutually from one to another. And He has placed the 
 systems of the fixed stars at immense distances from one another, 
 lest they should mutually rush upon one another by their gravity. 
 He governs all things, not as the Soul of the World, but as the Lord 
 of the Universe ; and because of His dominion. He is wont to be 
 called παντοκράτωρ, Universal Emperor. For God is a relative 
 word, and hath a relation to servants ; and the Deity is the Empire 
 of God, not over His own Body, as is the opinion of those who 
 make Him the Soul of the World, but over His servants. The 
 Supreme God is a Being, Eternal, Infinite, Absolutely Perfect ; 
 but a Being, however Perfect, without Dominion, is not Lord God. 
 . . . He governs all things, and knows all things which are done, 
 or which can be done. He is not Eternity and Infinity, but He is 
 Eternal and Infinite ; He is not Duration and Space, but He 
 endures and is present. He endures always, and is present every- 
 where ; and by existing always and everywhere. He constitutes 
 Duration and Space, Eternity and Infinity. Whereas every 
 particle of Space is always, and every indivisible moment of 
 Duration is everywhere, certainly the Framer and Lord of the 
 Universe shall not be never, nowhere. . . . We have not any notion 
 of the Substance of God. We know Him only by His properties 
 and attributes, and by the most wise and excellent structure of 
 Things, and by Final Causes ; but we adore and worship Him on 
 account of His Dominion. For we worship Him as His servants ; 
 and God without Dominion, Providence, and Final Causes, is 
 nothing else but Fate and Xature. There arises no Variety in 
 Things from blind metaphysical necessity, which is always and 
 everywhere the same. All diversity in the Creatures could arise 
 only from the Ideas and Will of a necessarily-existent Being. 
 We speak, however, allegorically when we say that God sees, 
 hears, speaks, laughs, loves, hates, despises, gives, receives, rejoices, 
 is angry, fights, fabricates, builds, composes. For all speech con- 
 cerning God is borrowed, by Analogy or some Eesemblance, from 
 human affairs. ... So much concerning God, of Whom the Dis- 
 course from Phenomena belongs to Experimental Philosophy. . . . 
 The main business of Natural Philosophy is to argue from 
 Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes 
 from Effects, till we come to the very First Cause, which certainly 
 is not mechanical. 
 
 Besides the better Argument from Design which the 
 reformed astronomy seemed to offer, there was also the 
 famous Cartesian argument from our Idea of a Perfect Being 
 to his Existence. Cudworth^ seems to feel the difficulties 
 
 ^ Intellectual System, vol. iii. pp. 38 if. 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 491 
 
 connected with this argument, but is unwilling to declare 
 himself against it. More/ however, who is less critical, 
 accepts it thankfully. I have already alluded to one serious 
 objection which Cudworth has to offer to the Cartesian system 
 — viz., that by substituting " mechanism " for the " plastick 
 soul," it leaves the immaterial substance, theoretically retained, 
 little, if anything, to do, and weakens immensely the value of 
 the argument from Design in Nature.^ However, the general 
 tendency of Cartesianism being favourable to religion, and 
 opposed to Hobbes, Cudworth is satisfied with merely warning 
 his readers against this particular flaw in the system. Holding 
 as he does a brief for Descartes, he argues that " mechanism," 
 in the Cartesian system, is so conceived as to necessitate the 
 assumption of the existence of an immaterial substance as άρχη 
 κίνησβως. He evidently attaches more value to this merit in 
 Cartesianism than to its proof of the Existence of Grod from 
 our Idea of him ; and yet it is plainly not a very great merit 
 after all, if we are left with data from which we are, indeed, 
 compelled to infer an Immaterial Power or Force beyond dead 
 matter, but cannot infer Wisdom controlling that Power or 
 Force. We are not surprised, then, to find that Cudworth 
 and his school, Cartesians though they profess to be, are 
 very strenuous in maintaining the contrary of the Cartesian 
 doctrine which makes True and False, Eight and Wrong, 
 depend entirely on the Will of God, and not rather on an 
 " Eternal ii'ature of Things," or " Law of the Ideal World," 
 logically distinct from, and prior to, the Will of God, in 
 accordance with which, however, the Will of God is always 
 exercised. Smith, indeed, the clearest head, I think, among 
 the English Platonists, is so well aware of the difficulty of 
 combining Cartesianism with Platonism that he touches but 
 lightly on the arguments for the existence of God supplied by 
 the former system, and dwells mainly on the evidence fur- 
 nished by man's moral nature and sanctified heart. " A Holy 
 Life" he says,^ is the best and most compendious way to Bight 
 Belief." Of the two witnesses spoken of by Kant — " The 
 starry Heaven above, and the Moral Law within" — Smith 
 
 1 An Antidote against AtMism, Book i. chaps. 7 and 8, pp. 20 if. 
 
 2 See p. 478 supra. 
 
 2 The True Way or Method of attaining to Divine Knowledge, p. 9. 
 
492 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 chose the latter to found his theological belief upon — in this 
 perhaps, more philosophical than Cudworth and More, thi 
 greater lights of the school, who, without ignoring the " argu- 
 ment from the heart," are inclined rather to look to " science ' 
 — to " design in nature," and to " epistemology " — for proof o: 
 the existence of God. 
 
 For the Immortality of the Soul, the other cardina' 
 doctrine of Theology and Morals, Cudworth and More are ver) 
 busy in producing " scientific " evidence, and, on the whole 
 find it easy to press the science of their day into the servici 
 of the doctrine. 
 
 The starting-point of their scientific argument is, that thi 
 Soul is an "incorporeal substance." Systems of Philosophy 
 both ancient and modern, are distinguished as " theistic " anc 
 " atheistic," according as they profess or deny the doctrine o; 
 " incorporeal substance." The saving merit of Descartes, as w( 
 have seen, is that, after all, he recognises " incorporeal sub• 
 stance." On the other hand, Hobbes denies it. In the nintl 
 chapter of the First Book of The Immortality of the Soul 
 More examines Hobbes' disproof of Spirit or incorporeal 
 substance. Hobbes' argument is, " Every substance hai 
 dimensions ; but a Spirit has no dimensions ; therefore then 
 is no spiritual substance." " Here," writes More,^ " I con 
 fidently deny the assumption. For it is not the character• 
 istikall of a Body to have dimensions, but to be impenetrable 
 All Substance has dimensions — that is. Length, Breadth, anc 
 Depth ; but all has not impenetrahility. See my letters tc 
 Monsieur Des Cartes." This refutation of Hobbes falls bacl• 
 on the definitions of Spirit and of Body which More has giver 
 in an earlier part of the same treatise ^ — Spirit is defined ai 
 " a Substance penetrable and indiscerpible " ; Body, as " a Sub• 
 stance impenetrable and discerpible." This definition he 
 amends in the chapter against Hobbes, putting it thus : — 
 Spirit or Incorporeal is " Extended Substance, with activity 
 and indiscerpibility , leaving out impenetrability " More thui 
 plainly ranges himself with those who assumed an extended 
 incorporeal substance ; but, of course, there were many incor- 
 porealists, among whom was Plotinus,^ who regarded Spirit as 
 
 1 Page 41. 2 p^ge 21. 
 
 ^ See Cudworth, Intell. System, vol. iii. p. 386. 
 
THE CAMBEIDGE PLATONISTS 493 
 
 unextended. Cudworth compares the opposite views of these 
 two classes of incorporealists at great length, and ends ^ by 
 leaving the question open, although one might gather that he 
 inclines to the view favoured by More from his speaking of 
 Space as incorporeal substance, with the attribute of exten- 
 sion, and infinite ; and therefore as equivalent to God, who is 
 the only infinite substance.^ 
 
 But the " incorporeal substance " of Descartes, though a 
 good enough " scientific" beginning for a doctrine of the 
 Immortality of the Soul, is only a beginning ; just as it is 
 only a beginning for a " scientific " proof of the existence of 
 God. Cartesianism falls short, according to the Cambridge 
 School, as we have seen, in ignoring the " plastic principle," 
 or "soul of nature." It leaves us between the horns of a 
 dilemma : either mere mechanism, once started by God, pro- 
 duces effects blindly ; or God interferes personally in the 
 smallest details. The plastic principle releases us from this 
 dilemma. It may be described as an incorporeal substance, 
 or principle, which, like Aristotle's φύσις, works evexa τον 
 without consciousness. To it God, who is Self-conscious Good- 
 ness and Wisdom, delegates, as it were, the task of carrying on 
 the operations of nature : these operations are therefore God's 
 operations, and His goodness and wisdom may be inferred from 
 them ; but we are not obliged to hold the ridiculous opinion 
 that He produces them by immediate intervention. It is the 
 plastic principle which, in the inorganic world, immediately 
 determines, e.g., the distances of the fixed stars from one 
 another and the paths of their planets, and, in the organic 
 world, appears as that " vegetative part of the Soul " which 
 builds up the body terrestrial, aerial or aethereal, without 
 which, as " vehicle," consciousness would be impossible in the 
 case of finite spirits : ^ without this plastic, vehicle-building, 
 principle there could be no " reproduction," to use T. H. 
 Green's terms, of the "Eternal Consciousness." I have 
 already, in an early part of this work,* had occasion to 
 describe the use which More makes of the plastic principle 
 in his account of the future existence of the Soul, and would 
 
 1 o.c. iii. 398. ' o.c. iii. 232. 
 
 ' Cudworth thinks it **j)robable" that no spirit except God can exist without 
 a body of some kind {InteU. System, vol. iii. p. 368). 
 4 Pages 95 flF. 
 
494 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 only add here that Cudworth treats of the principle in his 
 Intellectual System, vol. i. pp. 235-252 (ed. Mosheim and 
 Harrison) — in a passage well worth the attention of any one 
 interested in the point at issue between the " teleological " and 
 the " mechanical " explanation of the world. The English 
 Platonist of the seventeenth century, with his " plastic soul," 
 makes out, I venture to think, as plausible a case for 
 " teleology " as his successor, the English Idealist of the 
 nineteenth or twentieth century, manages to do with his 
 " spiritual principle." The chief difference between the two 
 advocates is that the former tells us frankly that his 
 plastic soul is "unconscious," while the latter leaves us in 
 doubt whether his " spiritual principle " is " conscious " or 
 " unconscious." 
 
 Having attempted to describe — in mere outline — the 
 learning and the science of the Cambridge Platonists, I now 
 go on to compare their central doctrine with that of the 
 English Idealists of the present day — the school of which 
 T. H. Green may be taken as representative. The comparison 
 will show, I think, that the central doctrine of these English 
 Idealists, equally with that of the Cambridge Platonists, is to 
 be traced to Plato — and to Plato the mythologist, rather than 
 to Plato the dialectician. 
 
 The central doctrine of the Cambridge Platonists is the 
 Doctrine of Ideas as presented in the Phaedrus Myth — that 
 is, presented to religious feeling as theory of the union of man 
 with God in knowledge and conduct. In the Doctrine of 
 Ideas, as it is presented to the scientific understanding in such 
 contributions to Logic as Republic, 509 D fP., the Cambridge 
 Platonists, like their Alexandrine predecessors, seem to take 
 little interest. 
 
 The Doctrine of Ideas as adopted by the Cambridge 
 Platonists may be stated as follows : — Sensible things, which 
 come into existence and perish, are but reflections, images, 
 ectypes, of Eternal Essences, Archetypal Forms, or Ideas. These 
 Ideas are the νοήματα, the " Thoughts," of Gou — the elements 
 which constitute his Eternal Wisdom, σοφία, or X6yo<;. The 
 Wisdom of God is that World of Ideas, that mundus arche- 
 typus, according to the conception of which he created this 
 visible world. Man attains to knowledge, ετηστημη, only in 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 495 
 
 so far as he apprehends these Eternal Thoughts of the Divine 
 Wisdom — only in so far as, spurred to reflection by the stimuli 
 of sense, he enters into communion with the Mind of God, 
 " sees things in God." This communion is possible only be- 
 cause man's spirit is of one kind with the spirit of God — τον 
 yap 761/09 εσμεν. " All minds partake of one original mind," ^ 
 are "reproductions of the Eternal Consciousness"^ — find that 
 its eternal Ideas are theirs too. Thus epistemology involves 
 theology. The theory of knowledge involves the supposition 
 of a " universal consciousness," or " Wisdom of God," as Eternal 
 Subject of those €ΪΒη or "forms," without the constructive 
 activity of which in the mind of man his sensations would be 
 " blind." 
 
 From this sketch it may be seen that the doctrine of 
 archetypal Ideas amounts, in the English Intellectualists, to a 
 Theory of Knowledge, in which the a priori element is recog- 
 nised, as in the Kantian philosophy. Let me fill in my sketch 
 by quoting some passages from More, Cudworth, Smith, Norris, 
 and Berkeley. 
 
 In his antidote against Atheism,^ More speaks of " relative 
 notions or ideas " — Cause and Effect, Whole and Part, Like 
 and Unlike — in much the same way as Kant speaks of his 
 "Categories of the Understanding." These "relative ideas," 
 he says, " are no external Impresses upon the senses, but the 
 Soul's own active manner of conceiving those things which are 
 discovered by the outward senses." Again, in the Cahhala,^ in a 
 passage which carries us out of the " Critique of Pure Eeason " 
 into the " Metaphysic of Morals," he says : " The Soul of man 
 is not merely passive as a piece of wood or stone, but is forth- 
 with made active by being acted upon ; and therefore if God 
 in us rules, we rule with him ; if he contend against sin in 
 us, we also contend together with him against the same ; if 
 he see in us what is good or evil, we, ipso facto, see by him 
 — In his light we see light ; and so in the rest." Again, in 
 his Philosophickall Poems^ the following curious passage occurs 
 — a passage, I venture to think, of considerable philosophic 
 import, on account of the wide view taken of innate ideas, or 
 a priori forms : bodies, it is suggested, are shaped, as well as 
 
 1 Cudworth, Int. System, iii. 62. ^ Green, Prolegomena to Ethics. 
 
 8 Page 18, bk. i. ch. 6. ^ p^ge 154. β Page 238. 
 
496 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 conscious experience organised, according to a 'priori, constitu- 
 tional forms : — 
 
 If plantall souls in their own selves contain 
 That vital formative fecundity, 
 That they a tree with different colours stain, 
 And diverse shapes, smoothnesse, asperity, 
 Straightnesse, acutenesse, and rotoundity, 
 A golden yellow, or a crimson red, 
 A varnish'd green with such like gallantry ; 
 How dull then is the sensitive ? how dead. 
 If forms from its own centre it can never spread ? 
 
 Again, an universal notion, 
 
 What object ever did that form impresse 
 
 Upon the soul ? What makes us venture on 
 
 So rash a matter, as e'er to confesse 
 
 Ought generally true ? when neverthelesse 
 
 AVe cannot e'er runne through all singulars. 
 
 Wherefore in our own souls we do possesse 
 
 Free forms and immateriall characters, 
 Hence 'tis the soul so boldly generall truth declares. 
 ****** 
 
 What body ever yet could figure show 
 
 Perfectly, perfect, as rotundity. 
 
 Exactly round, or blamelesse angularity ? 
 
 Yet doth the soul of such like forms discourse, 
 
 And finden fault at this deficiency, 
 
 And rightly term this better and that worse ; 
 
 Wherefore the measure is our own Idee^ 
 
 Which th' humane Soul in her own self doth see. 
 
 And sooth to sayen whenever she doth strive 
 
 To find pure truth, her own profundity 
 
 She enters, in her self doth deeply dive ; 
 From thence attempts each essence rightly to descrive. 
 
 The lines with which the last stanza ends find their com- 
 mentary in a passage in Smith's Discourse of the Immortality/ 
 of the Soul} in which the κίνησις ττροβαηκη and the κίνησι,ς 
 κυκΚίκη of the Soul are distinguished. By the former she goes 
 forth and deals with material things ; by the latter she reflects 
 upon herself. What she finds by " refiection " he sets forth 
 in his Discourse concerning the Existence and Nature of God} 
 
 Plotinus hath well taught us, eU eavrov ίττιστρίψων, €Ls οίρχην 
 ίτΓίστρβφζΐ, He which reflects upon himself reflects npon his own Origi- 
 nally and finds the clearest Impression of some Eternall Nature and 
 
 1 Pages 65, 66. 2 p^geg 123, 124. 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 497 
 
 Perfect Being stamp'd upon his own Soul. And therefore Plato 
 seems sometimes to reprove the ruder sort of men in his times for 
 their contrivance of Pictures and Images to put themselves in 
 mind of the Seoi or Angelicall Beings, and exhorts them to look 
 into their own Souls, which are the fairest Images, not onely of the 
 lower Divine Natures, but of the Deity itself; God having so 
 copied forth himself into the whole life and energy of man's Soul, 
 as that the lovely Characters of Divinity may be most easily seen 
 and read of all men within themselves ; as they say Phidias the 
 famous statuary, after he made the statue of Minerva with the 
 greatest exquisiteness of art to be set up in the Acropolis at 
 Athens, afterwards impressed his own Image so deeply in her 
 buckler, uf nemo delere possit aut divellere, qui Mam statuam non 
 imminueret. And if we would know what the Impresse of Souls 
 is, it is nothing but God himself, who could not write his own 
 name so as that it might be read but onely in Rationall Natures. 
 Neither could he make such without imparting such an Imitation 
 of his own Eternall Understanding to them as might be a per- 
 petual Memorial of himself within them. And whenever we look 
 upon our own Soul in a right manner, we shall find an Urim and 
 Thummim there, by which we may ask counsel of God himself, 
 who will have this alway born upon its breastplate. 
 
 The passage which I shall quote from Cudworth is a 
 criticism of Hobbes' " atheistical " doctrine that " knowledge 
 and understanding being in us nothing else but a tumult in 
 the mind raised by external things that press the organical 
 parts of a man's body, there is no such thing in God, nor can 
 they be attributed to him, they being things which depend 
 upon natural causes." ^ To this Cudworth replies : — 
 
 There comes nothing to us from bodies without us but only 
 local motion and pressure. Neither is sense itself the mere passion 
 of those motions, but the perception of their passions in a way of 
 fancy. But sensible things themselves (as, for example, light and 
 colours) are not known or understood either by the passion or the 
 fancy of sense, nor by anything merely foreign and adventitious, 
 but by intelligible ideas exerted from the mind itself — that is, by 
 something native and domestic to it. . . . Wherefore, besides the 
 phantasms of singular bodies, or of sensible things existing without 
 us (which are not mere passions neither), it is plain that our 
 human mind hath other cogitations or conceptions in it — namely, 
 the ideas of the intelligible natures and essences of things, which 
 are universal, and by and lender which it understands singulars 
 
 ^ Inlell. System, Hi. p. 60. 
 
 2k 
 
498 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 . . . which universal objects of our mind, though they exist not 
 as such anywhere without it, yet are they not therefore nothing, 
 but have an intelligible entity for this very reason, because they 
 are conceivable. ... If, therefore, there be eternal intelligibles 
 or ideas, and eternal truths and necessary existence do belong to 
 them, then must there be an eternal mind necessarily existing, 
 since these truths and intelligible essences of things cannot possibly 
 be anywhere but in a mind. . . . There must be a mind senior to 
 the world, and all sensible things, and such as at once compre- 
 hends in it the ideas of all intelligibles, their necessary scheses 
 and relations to one another, and all their immutable truths; a 
 mind which doth not ore μ^ν voet, ore δε ov voel (as Aristotle writeth 
 it), sometimes understand, and sometimes not understand . . . but 
 ova-La €V€/3y€ta, such a mind as is essentially act and energy, and 
 hath no defect in it. . . . Hence it is evident that there can be 
 but one only original mind ... all other minds whatsoever par- 
 taking of one original mind, and being, as it were, stamped with 
 the impression or signature of one and the same seal. From 
 whence it cometh to pass that all minds, in the several places and 
 ages of the world, have ideas or notions of things exactly alike, and 
 truths indivisibly the same. Truths are not multiplied by the 
 diversity of minds that apprehend them, because they are all but 
 ectypal participations of one and the same original or archetypal 
 mind and truth. As the same face may be reflected in several 
 glasses, and the image of the same sun may be in a thousand eyes 
 at once beholding it, and one and the same voice may be in a 
 thousand ears listening to it, so when innumerable created minds 
 have the same ideas of things, and understand the same truths, it 
 is but one and the same eternal light that is reflected in them all 
 (that light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the 
 world), or the same voice of that one everlasting Word, that is 
 never silent, re-echoed by them. . . . We conclude, therefore, 
 that from the nature of mind and knowledge it is demonstrable 
 that there can be but one original and self- existent Mind, or 
 understanding Being, from which all other minds were derived.^ 
 
 This is a passage, I venture to think, of first-rate histori- 
 cal importance. It furnishes the link which connects the 
 Epistemological Theism which we find in the writings of T. H. 
 Green with the Mythology of the Timaeus and Phaedrus. 
 
 Norris's discussion of the a 'priori in knowledge has some 
 points of special interest. Having shown, in the ordinary 
 way, that there are eternal and necessary Truths, i.e. eternal 
 and necessary Propositions, he dwells on the point that the 
 
 ^ Intell. System^ iii. pp. 62-72. 
 
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 499 
 
 simple essences, the mutual relations or habitudes of which 
 are set forth in these propositions, must be themselves eternal 
 and necessary. " There can be no mutual habitudes or 
 relations of things as to affirmation or negation," he says,^ 
 " without the reality of the things themselves," The point 
 here insisted on by Norris is one which the modern dictum^ 
 '' Things are nothing except as determined by Relations," is 
 apt to make us lose sight of; and his remarks following seem 
 to me to be worth attention : — 
 
 Two circles touching one another inwardly cannot have the same 
 common centre. This is a true Proposition. But I here demand, 
 How can it possibly have this certain habitude of division or 
 negation unless there be two such distinct simple Essences as 
 Circle and Centre. Certainly there can be no reference or 
 relation where there is nothing to support it. . . . If there can 
 be no connexion or relation between things that are not, then also 
 there can be no eternal connexion or relation between things that 
 have not an eternal existence. . . . But there are such eternal 
 habitudes and relations, therefore the simple Essences of things 
 are also eternal. ... I know very well this is not according to 
 the Decrees of the Peripatetic School, which has long since con- 
 demned it as Heretical Doctrine, to say that the Essences of things 
 do exist from eternity. . . . They tell us that the habitudes are 
 not attributed absolutely to the simple Essences as in actual being, 
 but only hypothetically — that whensoever they shall exist, they 
 shall also carry such relations to one another. There is, says the 
 Peripatetic, only a conditional connexion between the subject and 
 the predicate, not an absolute position of either. This goes 
 smoothly down with the young scholar at his Logic Lecture, and 
 the Tutor applauds his distinction, and thinks he has thereby 
 -quitted his hands of a very dangerous heresie. But now to this 
 I return answer . . . that these habitudes are not (as is supposed) 
 only by way of hypothesis, but absolutely attributed to the 
 simple Essences, as actually existing. For when I say, for 
 instance, that every part of a circle is equally distant from the 
 centre, this proposition does not hang in suspense, then to be 
 actually verified when the things shall exist in Nature^ but is at 
 present actually true, as actually true as ever it will or can be ; 
 and consequently I may thence infer that the things themselves 
 already are. There is no necessity, I confess, they should exist in 
 Nature, which is all that the objection proves, but exist they must. 
 For of nothing there can be no affection. . . . Having cleared our 
 way by making it evident that the simple Essences of things are 
 
 ^ Reason and Religion, p. 73. 
 
500 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 eternal, the next thing that I consider is, that since they are not 
 eternal in their natural subsistencieSj they must be eternal in some 
 other way of subsisting. And that must be in some understand- 
 ing, or by way of ideal subsistence.^ For there are but two con- 
 ceivable ways how anything may exist, either out of all under- 
 standing, or within some understanding. If, therefore, the simple 
 Essences of things are eternal, but not out of all understanding, it 
 remains they must have an eternal existence in some understand- 
 ing. Which is what I call an ideal subsistence. There is, therefore, 
 another way of existing besides that in Rerum Natura, namely, 
 in the Mundus Archetypus, or the Ideal World, where all the 
 Rationes rerum, or simple Essences of things, have an eternal and 
 immutable existence, before ever they enter upon the Stage of 
 Nature. I further consider, that this understanding wherein the 
 simple Essences of things have an eternal existence must be an 
 eternal understanding. For an Essence can no more eternally 
 exist in a temporary understanding than a body can be infinitely 
 extended in a finite space. Now, this Eternal Understanding can 
 be no other than the Understanding of God. The simple Essences 
 of things, therefore, do eternally exist in the Understanding 
 of God.2 
 
 God, Norris goes on to argue, is a simple and uncom- 
 pounded Being, and there is nothing in Him which is not 
 Himself ; accordingly, these Eternal Ideas, or Simple Essences 
 of Things, are but the Divine Essence itself, considered " as 
 variously exhibitive of things, and as variously imitable or 
 participate by them." ^ " This Ideal World, this Essence of 
 God considered as variously exhibitive and representative of 
 things, is no other than the Divine Χό^γος, the Second Person 
 of the ever Blessed Trinity." * Descartes, it is argued/ makes 
 God, as concepti'oe, the cause of Truth — i.e. as pleased to 
 conceive — e.g. a Triangle so and so — not as exhibitive of the 
 Eternal Ideas. Here Descartes " blunders horribly." " I am 
 for the dependence of Truth upon the Divine Intellect as well 
 as he, but not so as to make it arbitrary and contingent, and 
 consequently not upon the Divine Intellect as conceptive, but 
 only as exhibitive. That is, that things are therefore true 
 inasmuch as they are conformable to those standing and 
 
 ^ Norris here {Reason and Religion, p. 80) draws the distinction of which 
 Lotze makes so much in his Logic (Book iii. ch. 2, The World of Ideas, pp. 
 433 ff., English Transl.), between the Reality of Existence and the Reality of 
 Validity. ^ Jieason and Religion, pp. 74-81. 
 
 3 o.c. pp. 81, 82. 4 ^ g ρ 35 5 ^ ^^ pp_ g2, 93. 
 
THE CAMBEIDGE PLATONISTS 501 
 
 immutable Ideas which are in the mind of God as Exhibitive 
 and representative of the whole Possibility of Being." God 
 is omniscient, as " comprehending within himself all the 
 Ideas and Essences of things with all their possible references 
 and respects, that is, all Truth " ^ — a doctrine which seems to 
 me to be exactly equivalent to T. H. Green's doctrine of " the 
 Eternal Consciousness as subject of all Kelations." " We see 
 and know all things in God." ^ This doctrine, Norris tells us, 
 he thought out for himself, and afterwards found in Plotinus, 
 Proclus, St. Augustine, Marsilius Ficinus, and especially in 
 Malebranche, whose doctrine he then proceeds to state : ^ — We 
 know objects by the mediation of " Ideas." The " Ideas " of 
 things are in God. " God by his presence is intimately 
 united to our minds, so that God may be said to be the Pla/ie 
 of Spirits, as Space is the Plax^e of Bodies" Thus " we see all 
 things in God."* This is the doctrine of Malebranche, 
 accepted by Norris — a doctrine which labours under the 
 ambiguity attaching to its use of the term " Idea," which 
 means both a mental image derived from a sensible object, and 
 an eternal ihea in the Platonic acceptation. But we need not 
 go into this difiiculty in Malebranche's doctrine ; it is enough 
 here to notice that Norris understands the doctrine as 
 genuinely Platonic. Plato's definition of knowledge as a 
 " Participation of Ideas " amounts, he says,^ to " seeing all 
 things in God." 
 
 "If we did not some way or other see God, we should see nothing 
 at all ; even as if we did not love God, that is, if God did not con- 
 tinually impress upon us the love of good in general, we should 
 love nothing at all : for since this Love is the same with our Will, 
 we cannot love or will anything without him, since we cannot love 
 particular goods but by determining towards those goods that 
 motion of Love which God gives us towards himself." ^ " All our 
 Illumination proceeds from the Divine λόγο?, the substantial 
 Wisdom of God. But St. John speaks more plainly : This is the 
 true light which enlightens every man that comes into the world. Now, 
 true Light is here the same as only Light, and implies that all other 
 pretended lights are false ones. Again, says our Lord, / am the 
 Light of the World. And, I am the way, the truth, and the life. 
 And again says our Lord in his Prayer, Sanctifie them through 
 
 m 
 
 1 o.e. p. 101. 2 Q^c. p. 18δ. ^ ^.c. pp. 187-194. 
 
 4 o.c. p. 202. « O.C. p. 207. ' o,c. p. 200. 
 
502 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 thy truth; thy word is truth : which is not meant of the written 
 word, but of the Substantial and Eternal Word, as appears from 
 the context. Lastly, the Apostle says expressly of this Divine 
 Word, that L• is made unto us Wisdom. Which is exactly accord- 
 ing to our hypothesis that we see all things in the Ideal World, 
 or Divine λόγο?. . . . All our Light and Illumination proceeds 
 wholly from him who at first said let there he light. We see so 
 much of Truth as we see of God. The Ideas which are in God are 
 the very Ideas which we see. The Divine Aoyos is our Wisdom, as 
 well as the Wisdom of his Father. So absolutely necessary is 
 the Doctrine of Ideas, when rightly stated, to the explaining the 
 Mode both of Divine and Human knowledge; without which I 
 shall venture to affirm that they can neither of them be explained 
 or understood." ^ 
 
 Dominus Illuminatio Mea\ "The Platonic Philosophers 
 do wonderfully refine upon Light, and soar very high," as 
 Berkeley writes in Siris^ — himself, at last, a professed ad- 
 herent of the school of Cudworth : — 
 
 As understanding perceiveth not, that is, doth not hear, or 
 see, or feel, so sense knoweth not; and although the mind may 
 use both sense and fancy as means whereby to arrive at know- 
 ledge, yet sense or soul, so far forth as sensitive, knoweth nothing. 
 For as it is rightly observed in the Theaetetus of Plato, science 
 consists not in the passive perceptions, but in the reasoning upon 
 them, τω π€ρΙ εκείνων σνλλογίσ-μω.^ 
 
 So much for the epistemology, strictly so called, of the 
 Cambridge Platonists. It is a theory of the communion of 
 man with God, derived from the doctrine of IBeai as set forth 
 " mythologically " in the Timaeus, Fhaedrus, and Symposium. 
 
 It is easy to see how this epistemology explains the 
 function ascribed by the school to Keason, as Moral Faculty — 
 as recognising and imposing Obligation. Morality is the 
 Kational Life — the Life regulated by the consciousness of 
 Self, not as passive in the midst of the flux of vanishing 
 sensibles, but as actively displaying its own spiritual nature 
 and kinship with God by communicating in His eternal and 
 immutable nature. Its rational communion in his nature is 
 not an outward act, like looking at a picture which one may 
 turn away from when one pleases: it is an inward act 
 
 "i o.c. pp. 222-224. ] 2 § 2IO. » Siris, § 305. 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 603 
 
 of reflection — κίνησις κυκλική — revealing one's own per- 
 manent nature — permanent, in that it " mirrors " or " repro- 
 duces " God's nature ; it is an inward act revealing one's 
 own permanent nature, which one cannot — even when it 
 would please one to do so — turn one's back upon. The 
 object of Keason, with which Eeason is itself identical, is the 
 whole man, regarded sub specie aeternitatis, seen in God, seen 
 in his own proper place in the Cosmos. This object cannot 
 be set aside, as the object of a passing inclination may be set 
 aside. This is how "Eeason imposes Obligation." Nor does 
 the physical organism of plant or animal differ in this respect 
 from the moral nature, if we consider the matter philosophi- 
 cally. It obliges those functions and acts which are in accord- 
 ance with its particular Type, its particular Type being a 
 " mode " of the Universe. 
 
 " Keason," then, as it is understood by the Platonists, 
 being the consciousness of Self as creature made after the 
 image of God — as mirror of the aeternae rationes rerum which 
 constitute the Divine Sapientia, — " Eeason," being this, needs 
 not to have its dictates enforced by any alien power : in being 
 promulgated they are carried out. The moral life is, on its 
 plane, as inevitable as the physical life. All living creatures 
 strive after that good which is competent to their several types 
 in the places which they hold in the great system of the 
 Universe. " There is nothing," says Norris,^ " in nature more 
 necessary — no, nor so necessary and invincible, as that motion 
 whereby we are carried forth to good in general. Here the 
 Soul must not pretend to the least shadow of Liberty, having 
 no more command over this motion than she has over the 
 motion of the Sun." " God is that which we directly and 
 properly love (or desire), and created goods, or particular 
 goods, are only so far loved as they resemble and participate 
 of the nature of that universal good." " If we did not love 
 God ... we should love nothing at all. . . . This Love is 
 the same with our Will." ^ We are reminded of Aristotle's 
 το iv ημΐν Oeiov, that answering nisus or love in us, and in all 
 living creatures, which is awakened by God, who, himself 
 unmoved, moves all things by the attraction of loveliness — a 
 doctrine glossed by Plottnus, where he says that the Principle 
 
 1 Reason and Eeligimi, pp. 237, 238. - ox. p. 200. 
 
504 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 of Organic Life is Love contemplating the Ideal Forms, and, 
 by its mere act of silent contemplation, producing embodi- 
 ments of them — καΐ oi βρωτβς ΙΒόντων καΐ iirl το etSo? 
 στΓβυΒόντων} 
 
 That " Keason," in the epistemology and moral theology 
 of our Platonists, is consciousness of the Whole — of God-in- 
 Man and Man-in-God — is a point which it is important to 
 keep steadily in view, not only if we would understand what 
 is meant by " obligation," but also if we would get behind 
 phrases to real meaning, when we are told that the " Truths 
 apprehended by Eeason " are " eternal and immutable," that 
 is, " necessary," being at once the contents of the Divine 
 Wisdom and the conditions of human knowledge. No 
 " Truth," taken by itself, can be apprehended as " necessary " ; 
 it can only be accepted as a νττόθβσι,ς. The " necessity " of a 
 " Truth " is apparent only to a synoptic gaze, which takes in 
 the whole order of which the " Truth " is a part. The whole 
 is first acquiesced in as άρχη άννττόθβτος, and then we 
 see that its parts severally " cannot be otherwise." This 
 is the gist of the passage at the end of the Sixth Book 
 of the Republic, where the function of Eeason in Dialectic 
 is set forth. A " Truth " is seen to be " necessary " 
 when it is seen to be involved in the " whole " ; and the 
 progress of knowledge is a process of integration by which 
 disjecta membra of experience are pieced together into a con- 
 sistent whole, and their natures seen to be such as " cannot be 
 otherwise." But this process would be impossible unless the 
 Eational Soul came to her task of integration with a native 
 idea of the " whole." This native idea is not something which 
 is a mere part of her. It is herself — the unity of her self- 
 hood of which she is conscious. As her knowledge advances — 
 that is, as she brings more and more data into clearly-seen 
 relation with her own " self-centrality," as More phrases it, she 
 herself spreads from her centre, becoming more and more 
 " adequate " to the objective world, more and more assimilated 
 to God. This growth of the Eational Soul in " Likeness to 
 God " — in " correspondence with environment " — expresses the 
 law of her inmost being, commanding categorically : Live thy 
 Life, 
 
 ^ Enn. iii. 8. 7, 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 505 
 
 " Reason," then, according to the Platonic school, is 
 " organism." How shallow the criticism which finds fault 
 with them for giving us, in Eeason, a principle which is not a 
 principle of action, and carries with it no consciousness of 
 obligation ! As if organism, with its invincible Wille zum 
 Leben, did not move, and oblige, to action ! 
 
 The central doctrine of the English Platonists, which I am 
 trying to set forth, gives an important place to the discussion 
 of the relation of God's " Will " to his " Wisdom and Good- 
 ness." By the " Wisdom and Goodness " of God they under- 
 stand the perfect order of that mundus archetyjpus, or system 
 of iheat, or νοήματα, dwelling from all eternity in the Divine 
 Intellect; by the "Will" of God, the going forth of his 
 Power in the production and preservation of this visible world 
 and all that is in it. They maintain, against Descartes and 
 others,^ that God's " Will " did not make, and cannot alter, 
 the contents of the intelligible world, which have natures 
 "essential," not "arbitrary." God's "Will" is ruled by his 
 " Wisdom and Goodness " — that is, his " Will " expresses his 
 essential nature. He cannot make right wrong, or true false, 
 by arbitrary act of Will. 
 
 If God do all things simply at his pleasure ^ 
 Because lie will, and not because it's good, 
 So that his actions will have no set measure ; 
 Is 't possible it should be understood 
 What he intends ? I feel that he is loved 
 Of my dear soul, and know that I have borne 
 Much for his sake ; yet is it not hence proved 
 That I shall live, though I do sigh and mourn 
 To find his face ; his creature's wish he'll shght and scorn. 
 
 Nor of well-being, nor subsistency 
 Of our poor souls, when they do hence depart, 
 Can any be assured, if liberty 
 We give to such odde thoughts, that thus pervert 
 The laws of God, and rashly do assert 
 That Will rules God, but Good rules not God's Will. 
 What e'er from right, love, equity, doth start. 
 For ought we know then God may act'that ill. 
 Only to shoΛV his might, and his free mind fulfill. 
 
 1 E.g. Occam (as quoted by Maxwell in his edition of Cumberland's Laws of 
 Nature, p. 80) — " nullus est actuf mains, nisi quatenus a Deo prohibitus est, et 
 qui non potest fieri bonus, si a Deo praecipiatur, et e converse." 
 
 2 More, Phil. Poems, p. 179. 
 
506 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 To the same effect, Cudworth : ^ — 
 
 Plotinus writeth, Trotet to θ€Ϊον as ττ^φνκζ, 7Γ€φνκ€ Se κατά την 
 αντου ονσίαν, η το καλ6ν kv ταΐζ ivepyeiais αντον καΐ Th δίκαιον 
 (τννεκφίρζί, €t γαρ μη €κά ταύτα, ττον αν €Ϊη ; " The Deity acteth 
 according to its own nature and essence ; and its nature and 
 essence display eth goodness and justice : for if these things 
 be not there, where should they else be found?" And 
 again, elsewhere : θ^ος S-n-cp ^χρην cTvai, ov toIwv οΰτω 
 σννίβη, αλλ* eSet οΰτω' το δ* €^€i τοντο αρχή των δσα Ιδβι : 
 " God is essentially that which ought to be : and therefore he did 
 not happen to be such as he is : and this first ought to be is the 
 principle of all things whatsoever that ought to be." Wherefore 
 the Deity is not to be conceived as mere arbitrariness, humour, or 
 irrational will and appetite omnipotent (which would, indeed, be 
 but omnipotent chance), but as an overflowing fountain of love 
 and goodness, justly and wisely dispensing itself, and omnipotently 
 reaching all things. The Avill of God is goodness, justice, and 
 wisdom; or decorousness, and ought itself, willing; so that the 
 TO βζλτίστον, that which is absolutely the best, is v6μos άττα/οά/^ατο?, 
 "an indispensable law to it, because its very essence." God is 
 μίτρον πάντων, an "impartial balance" lying even, equal, and 
 indifferent, to all things, and weighing out heaven and earth, and 
 all the things therein, in the most just and exact proportions, and 
 not a grain too much or too little of anything. Nor is the Deity 
 therefore bound or obliged to do the best, in any way of servility 
 (as men fondly imagine this to be contrary to his liberty), much 
 less by the law and command of any superior (which is a contra- 
 diction), but only by the perfection of its own nature, which it 
 cannot possibly deviate from, no more than ungod itself. 
 
 Now, we must not regard this question of the relation of 
 the " Will " to the " Wisdom and Goodness " of God as one of 
 those bygone questions of scholasticism with which we need 
 no longer, in our day, trouble ourselves. It is a present-day 
 question — indeed, a perennial question. It raises the whole 
 issue of Pessimism against Optimism. 
 
 Pessimism will never infect the bulk of mankind — those 
 who do not reflect, but push their way on, and lead ambitious, 
 industrious lives ; but reflective idle people — a growing number 
 in the modern world — it is likely to infect more and more. 
 It is likely to get hold of literature, and even of philosophy, to 
 a greater extent. The number is steadily growing of those 
 who are educated in book-learning, and can make a living by 
 
 1 Intell System, iii. 463, 464. 
 
THE CAMBEIDGE PLATONISTS 507 
 
 supplying idle readers with reflections on life embodied in the 
 novel and other forms of "light reading." Pessimism suits 
 well with the mood which such writers have to cater for — the 
 mood of habitual lookers-on at life ; but those whose energetic 
 temperament moves them to put their hand to things and try 
 to get them done are not troubled with the suspicion that all 
 their work is vanity. 
 
 It was a profound insight which caused Plato to debar 
 from philosophy all those who were not likely to have an 
 opportunity of taking an active part in affairs.^ It is Plato, 
 of all the Greeks the most enthusiastically possessed by the 
 idea of Greek civilisation as an influence to be propagated in 
 the world, — it is Plato, with his firm practical hold of the 
 belief that Life is worth living, — who stands out, in the His- 
 tory of Philosophy, as the opponent of individualism, whether 
 hedonistic or pessimistic. The individualists of his day, the 
 Sophists, whom he opposes expressly or by implication through- 
 out the whole range of his writings, were men for the most 
 part without close political ties, aliens in the cities where they 
 taught, who cultivated philosophy without patriotism and 
 religion. It was from them that the doctrine ού φύσβι τα 
 Βίκαία, άλλα νόμω μόνον came — a doctrine which answers to 
 the view combated by the Cambridge Platonists, that Eight 
 and Wrong, True and False, are creatures of God's arbitrary 
 Will. If this is true, the " virtuously happy, or holy, life " is 
 not worth pursuing ; chance is lord of all, and strenuous effort 
 on our part is labour lost. This was how the Cambridge 
 Platonists argued. In our own day. Pessimism is most often 
 disappointed Hedonism. But it may well come from any cause 
 which damps the energies of men : thus, the doctrine of 
 Determinism may produce it by persuading us that our actions 
 are all determined beforehand by the ειμαρμένη of the Uni- 
 verse, and that we are but the passive spectators even of our 
 own actions. Without denying that ειμαρμένη, in the sense 
 of law universal, determines our actions, I would submit that 
 the doctrine is too abstract to be of practical consequence. It 
 takes us back to the axioma maxime generale — the Universe 
 — ^and omits the immediate antecedent — the concrete character 
 of the individual who performs the actions. It is this im- 
 
 * Republic, 473 d. 
 
508 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 mediate antecedent, however, which one who wishes to take a 
 scientific view of the actions must chiefly consider — the Uni- 
 verse, or chain of remote antecedents, may "go without 
 saying " ; and, above all, it is this immediate antecedent on 
 which the agent himself must fix his attention ; he must " look 
 to himself" as the phrase is, not to " the Universe," if he is to 
 do anything worth doing. The abstract doctrine of Deter- 
 minism, by calling attention away too much from the im- 
 mediate antecedent of actions — the concrete agent himself — 
 is at once unscientific and practically harmful, tending to 
 paralyse the energy of the agent whose actions it seeks to 
 account for. The agent must " believe in himself " if actions 
 are to be done ; and he cannot believe in himself unless he 
 believes in a system of things which is suitable to him, in 
 which he can get on — a friendly, not an alien world. These 
 two beliefs go together — belief in Self, and belief in a Friendly 
 World. They are the two faces of the same coin. And this 
 is the great truth signified by the doctrine of Reflection — κίνησις 
 κνκλίκη — set forth by the Cambridge Platonists — their doc- 
 trine that the Soul's reflection upon herself reveals to her that 
 system of Eternal Truths which are at once the principles of 
 human knowledge and conduct, and the Thoughts of God in 
 accordance with which his Will is determined to do every- 
 thing for the Best. The only sovereign antidote against 
 Pessimism is a belief (tacit, or expressed — better, perhaps, tacit) 
 of this sort. But such belief, it must be remembered, rests 
 not on speculative grounds, but is the birth of conduct. It 
 is the possession of those only who are airovhatoL — in earnest 
 about the practical life. The issue between " Mechanism " and 
 " Teleology " — for that, again, is the issue involved in the ques- 
 tion about the relation of God's " Will " to his " Wisdom and 
 Goodness " — is not one to be settled by logical thinkers, but 
 by moral agents. Logical thinkers, it seems to me, must decide 
 in favour of " Mechanism " ; moral agents will always decide 
 in favour of "Teleology." And they are right, because 
 " Teleology " is the working hypothesis of Life, whereas the 
 doctrine of " Mechanism " damps the vis viva on which Life, 
 including the logical understanding itself, depends for its con- 
 tinuance. 
 
 The central doctrine of the Cambridge Platonists receives 
 
THE CAMBEIDGE PLATONISTS 509 
 
 considerable illumination from their treatment of the famous 
 maxim, identified chiefly with the name of Descartes, " Clear 
 and distinct ideas must be true." The maxim, of course, 
 can be traced back to Plato himself, who, at the end of the 
 Sixth Book of the Eepublic, makes σαφήνεια the test of 
 άΧήθεία. It is a maxim which undoubtedly lends itself to 
 abuse, if not limited, as it is carefully limited by Plato in the 
 passage just mentioned, as referring only to "ideas" in the 
 sense of "categories" or "notions" — organic conditions of 
 experience — and not also to " ideas " in the more ordinary sense 
 — of "impressions," or data of experience. Kant's final proof of 
 the apriority of his Categories of the Understanding is that 
 " we cannot think them away " — their opposites are inconceiv- 
 able — they belong to the structure of the mind — are not data 
 received by it. Similarly, the Cambridge Platonists accept as 
 principles of knowledge and conduct those Ideas which the κίνη- 
 σις κυκλική, or Eeflection of the Soul upon herself as mirror 
 of the Divine Wisdom, sees clearly and distinctly. Such are 
 the " relative ideas " (as More calls them), Cause and Effect, 
 Whole and Part, etc., and the Ideas of God and of Immor- 
 tality. The truth of such " Ideas " is simply " their clear in- 
 telligibility." Their truth needs no other witness. It is in 
 order to maintain this view of the self-evident truth of these 
 " Ideas " or " Categories " that Cudworth submits to a search- 
 ing criticism Descartes' doctrine, that we fall back upon the 
 supposition of the " Veracity of God " as ground of our belief 
 that our clear and distinct ideas do not deceive us. Against 
 this doctrine he argues that not even God could make clear 
 and distinct " Ideas," in the sense of νοήματα, Categories, or 
 principles of knowledge, false : they are essentially true ; and 
 their clear intelligibility is alone sufficient warrant of their 
 truth, or objective validity. Our very " Idea " of a Perfect, 
 and therefore Veracious, God is itself one of these νοήματα, 
 the truth of which is warranted by their " clear intelligibility." 
 The passage ^ in which Cudworth makes this point against 
 Descartes is, indeed, a notable passage in the History of the 
 " Theory of Knowledge," and merits close comparison with 
 Kant's Transcendental Analytic : — 
 
 1 IrUell, System, iii. 31-35. 
 
510 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 It hath been asserted by a late eminent philosopher that there 
 is no possible certainty to be had of anything, before we be certain 
 of the existence of a God essentially good ; because we can never 
 otherwise free our minds from the importunity of that suspicion 
 which with irresistible force may assault them ; that ourselves 
 might possibly be so made, either by chance or fate, or by the 
 pleasure of some evil demon, or at least of an arbitrary omnipo- 
 tent Deity, as that Λve should be deceived in all our most clear 
 and evident perceptions, and, therefore, in geometrical theorems 
 themselves, and even in our common notions. But when we are 
 once assured of the existence of such a God as is essentially good, 
 — who, therefore, neither will nor can deceive, — then, and not 
 before, will this suspicion utterly vanish, and ourselves become 
 certain that our faculties of reason and understanding are not 
 false and imposturous, but rightly made. . . . Now, though there 
 be a plausibility of piety in this doctrine . . . yet does that very 
 supposition that our understanding faculties might possibly be so 
 made as to deceive us in all our clearest perceptions, render it 
 utterly impossible ever to arrive to any certainty concerning the 
 existence of a God essentially good ; forasmuch as this cannot 
 be any otherwise proved than by the use of our faculties of under- 
 standing, reason, and discourse. For to say that the truth of our 
 understanding faculties is put out of all doubt and question as 
 soon as ever we are assured of the existence of a God essentially 
 good, who therefore cannot deceive ; whilst the existence of a God 
 is in the meantime itself no otherwise proved than by our under- 
 standing faculties ; that is at once to prove the truth of God's 
 existence from our faculties of reason and understanding, and 
 again to prove the truth of those faculties from the existence of a 
 God essentially good : this, I say, is plainly to move round in a 
 circle, and to prove nothing at all . . . so that if we will pretend 
 to any certainty at all concerning the existence of a God, we must 
 of necessity explode this new-supplied hypothesis of the possibility 
 of our understandings being so made as to deceive us in all our 
 clearest perceptions. ... In the first place, therefore, we affirm 
 that no power, how great soever, and therefore not omnipotence 
 itself, can make anything to be indifferently either true or false. 
 . . . Truth is not factitious ; it is a thing which cannot be arbi- 
 trarily made^ but is. The divine will and omnipotence itself hath 
 no imperium upon the divine understanding ; for if God under- 
 stood only by will, he could not understand at all. In the next 
 place, we add that, though the truth of singular contingent pro- 
 positions depends upon the things themselves existing without, as 
 the measure and archetype thereof, yet as to the universal and 
 abstract theorems of science, the terms whereof are those reasons 
 of things which exist nowhere but only in the mind itself (whose 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 611 
 
 noemata and ideas they are), the measure and rule of truth con- 
 cerning them can be no foreign or extraneous thing without the 
 mind, but must be native and domestic to it, or contained within 
 the mind itself, and therefore can be nothing but its clear and dis- 
 tinct perception. In these intelligible ideas of the mind whatsoever 
 is clearly perceived to be is ; or, which is all one, is true. . . . 
 The very essence of truth here is this clear perceptibility, or in- 
 telligibility. . . . The upshot of all this is, that since no power, 
 how great soever, can make anything indifferently to be true, and 
 since the essence of truth in universal abstract things is nothing 
 but clear perceptibility, it follows that omnipotence cannot make 
 anything that is false to be clearly perceived to be, or create such 
 minds and understanding faculties as shall have as clear concep- 
 tion of falsehoods — that is, of nonentities — as they have of truths 
 or entities. For example, no rational understanding being that 
 knows what a part is, and what a whole, what a cause, and what 
 an effect, could possibly be so made as clearly to conceive the part 
 to be greater than the whole, or the effect to be before the cause, 
 or the like. . . . Conception and knowledge are hereby made to 
 be the measure of all power, even omnipotence or infinite power 
 being determined thereby ; from whence it follows that power hath 
 no dominion over understanding, truth, and knowledge.^ 
 
 We see, then, that the Epistemology of the Cambridge 
 Platonists involves a Theory of God, according to which the 
 Divine Will is subordinate to the Divine Wisdom and Goodness. 
 A God merely all-powerful would be one of whom, and of 
 whose world, knowledge would be impossible. We have a 
 " clear and distinct idea " of a wise and good God, and in the 
 light of this " idea " see the truth and do the right. 
 
 This Platonic doctrine seems to me to contain all that is 
 important in Kant's doctrine of the regulative value of the 
 Idea of God. The Idea of God, Kant tells us, has no object 
 in a possible experience. It lies deeper in human nature than 
 the scientific understanding. Together with the Idea of Soul 
 and the Idea of Cosmos, it has its seat in Keason ; which 
 
 ^ Compare Spinoza, Eth. ii. 43. schol. : "Veram habere ideam nihil aliud 
 significat quam perfecte sive optime rem cognoscere ; nee sane aliquis de hac re 
 dubitare potest, nisi putet, ideam quid mutum instar picturae in tabula, et iion 
 modum cogitandi esse, nempe ipsum intelligere . . . quid idea vera clarius et 
 certius dari potest quod norma sit veritatis. Sane sicut lux se ipsam et teuebras 
 manifestat, sic Veritas norma sui et falsi est." And again {de Intellectus Emen• 
 datione, vi. § 33) : '* Modus quo sentimus essentiam formalem est ipsa certitudo. 
 Unde patet quod ad certitudinem veritatis nullo alio signo sit opus quam verani 
 habere ideam." And {o.c. ix. §#1): "Forma verae cogitationis in eadem ipsa 
 cogitatione sine relatione ad alias debet esse sita ; nee obj actum tanquam causam 
 agnoscit, sed ab ipsa intellectus potentia et natura pendere debet." 
 
512 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 must not be regarded as a " faculty " co-ordinate with other 
 " faculties," but as the whole man — the indivisible organism 
 in which " faculties " inhere. The Idea of God, then, having 
 its seat in Keason, is an attitude of the whole man. An 
 " Idea " which has no object in a possible experience, if 
 expressed in language at all, must be expressed in figurative 
 language ; so, I need not apologise for using a figure here to 
 help me, and least of all for using the figure of Light, on which 
 " the Platonists do wonderfully refine, and soar very high." 
 The " Idea of God " is like the influence of Light, which draws 
 living creatures out of the prison of darkness into the freedom 
 of its borders. It is not a particular impression, nor yet one 
 of the Categories in which impressions are received, but the 
 Good Hope which urges on the living creature to go forth 
 and meet the impressions of experience and organise his life 
 in the world which they constitute. 
 
 It is in feeling the stimulus of this Good Hope that man 
 feels the obligation of the " Categorical Imperative." When 
 I say that the doctrine of the " Categorical Imperative" is deeply 
 embedded in the philosophy of the Cambridge Platonists, I am 
 not trying to get them credit for great originality in their 
 anticipation of a doctrine which has been too much identified 
 with the name of Kant. Every system of Ethics, worthy to 
 be called a system at all, takes us down to the bed-rock of the 
 " Categorical Imperative." But what I do wish to claim for the 
 Cambridge Platonists is that they lay the bed-rock very bare. 
 
 The first original obHgation (says Cudworth) ^ is not from 
 will, but nature. Did obHgation to the things of natural justice, 
 as many suppose, arise from the will and positive command of 
 God, only by reason of punishments threatened and rewards 
 promised, the consequence of this would be that no man was 
 good and just but only by accident, and for the sake of something 
 else ; whereas the goodness of justice or righteousness is intrinsical 
 to the thing itself, and this is that which obligeth (and not any- 
 thing foreign to it), it being a different species of good from that 
 of appetite or private utility, which every man may dispense 
 withal. 
 
 Again, in Smith's Discourse of Legal Righteousness and of 
 the Righteousness of Faith, the Gospel, as distinguished from 
 
 ^ Intell. System, iii. 512. 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 513 
 
 the Law, is presented as involving the obligation of a " Cate- 
 gorical Imperative " : — 
 
 The Righteousness of the Gospel transcends that of the Law 
 in that it hath indeed a true command over the inward man, which it 
 acts and informs ; whereas the Law by its menaces and punish- 
 ments could only compel men to an external observance of it in tL• 
 outward man ; as the Schoolmen have well observed, Lex joetus 
 ligat manum. Lex nova ligat animum. 
 
 Again, Maxwell,^ criticising the view which he ascribes 
 
 (erroneously) to Cumberland, that the obligation of the 
 
 Law of Nature is not in itself, but' in its external sanction, 
 
 says : — 
 
 Although Sin and Punishment are closely connected, yet the 
 obligation of it may not he done (non licet) is distinct from the 
 obligation of not with impunity {non impune), as Sin and Punishment 
 are of distinct consideration. But a man is bound, both when he 
 cannot do a thing without sin, and when he cannot do a thing 
 without punishment. But because the obligation of non licet is ante- 
 cedent to the obligation of non impune, the Precept to the Sanction, 
 and the Sin is made by the Law, the Law hath so much obligation 
 as to make the Sin, before the Penalty is enacted ; therefore the 
 Law has an obligation antecedently to the Sanction of it. 
 
 Maxwell's view of Cumberland — that he leaves the Law 
 of Nature with no obligation save that derived from self- 
 interest — I consider entirely mistaken ; Cumberland is really 
 at one with Maxwell and the whole Platonist school in holding 
 that the moral agent, the subject of obligation, is conscious of 
 obligation in being conscious of the identity of the Law of 
 Righteousness in himself with the Law which rules the Divine 
 Nature. The moral agent is obliged, not because God arbi- 
 trarily commands him, and will punish disobedience, but 
 because he is conscious of a Law so august that even God is 
 ruled by it. In Kant this consciousness which the moral 
 agent has of God ruled by the Law of Righteousness is 
 attenuated down to a consciousness of the " universality " of the 
 Law. Thus the English statement of the doctrine of " obliga- 
 tion " enables us to see the theological basis concealed under 
 Kant's superstructure ; but, at the same time, shows us how 
 
 ^ In his edition of Cumberland's Laws of Nature, Appendix, p. 56 (1727). 
 
 2l 
 
614 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Kant may be successfully defended against the criticism of 
 which Schopenhauer's attack, in the Grundlage der Moral} may 
 be taken as a specimen — the criticism which urges that the 
 Imperative is, after all, not " categorical," but " hypothetical " 
 — has an external sanction, the penalty which attaches to 
 disobeying God's command. The Platonic doctrine of the 
 relation between the Divine Will and the Divine Wisdom 
 and Goodness, and of man's participation in the mundus 
 archetyjpus constituted by that Wisdom and Goodness — the 
 doctrine of the "presence of the Eternal Consciousness in 
 man's consciousness " — explains and justifies Kant's use of the 
 epithet " categorical," and turns the edge of Schopenhauer's 
 criticism, which proceeds on the assumption that the Deity, 
 who undoubtedly stands behind the Kantian moral Imperative, 
 is effective as mere Power threatening punishment, not rather 
 as Wisdom-and-Goodness drawing the minds and hearts of all 
 men unto it. In an amusing passage,^ Schopenhauer compares 
 Kant to a man who dances the whole evening, at a ball, 
 with a masked lady, who turns out, in the end, to be his own 
 wife. That lady is Theology. But Schopenhauer takes for 
 granted that she is the juridical theology modelled after the 
 Koman Civil Law ; whereas, if we compare Kant with his 
 next of kin, the English Platonists, we see that his masked 
 theology is the theology of Platonism — a theology as 
 different from the other as the Hellenic genius is different 
 from the Eoman. I submit that the " Categorical Imperative " 
 is best understood in close connection with the Greek moral 
 notions of the ayaOov and the κ,άΧόν. Moral obligation is not 
 essentially pressure brought to bear on the unwilling, but is 
 rather the nisus of a nature eagerly seeking its appointed 
 place In the Cosmos, and, in its efforts, experiencing, by anti- 
 cipation, the joy of success. Virtue grows up like a flower to 
 the light, joyfully realising its own nature as part of universal 
 nature. This is, indeed, the way in which Maxwell wishes us 
 to understand " obligation " — not juridically, but, if I may foist 
 the term on him, liologically. Having quoted Shaftesbury at 
 length, as holding the doctrine of the intrinsic obligation of 
 the Law of Virtue — " That the excellence of the Object, not the 
 Keward or Punishment, should be our motive," — he states his 
 1 Pages 120 if. ^ o.c. p. 169. 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 615 
 
 own view thus : ^ " The Good in Morality, the Good of Virtue, 
 is the καλόν καΐ αηαθον, the Beauteous-Beneficial Life and 
 Practice." This Greek standard he afterwards explains, in a 
 way which reminds one of Kant, as " impartiality between 
 man and man." " We should do all things," he says,^ " no 
 otherwise than as if Justice itself did them." Maxwell's 
 criticism of Cumberland — that he makes the ultimate motive 
 the self-interest secured by obedience to the Law of Nature — is, 
 as I have said, mistaken ; but it is interesting on account of 
 its similarity to the criticism which Schopenhauer brings 
 against Kant. Both critics are, I think, misled by the sup- 
 position that their respective authors are juridical and not 
 Platonist theologians. That juridical theology inliuenced both 
 Cumberland and Kant is, of course, indisputable ; but it is a 
 grave error, on the part of the critics, to mistake an influence, 
 which made itself felt in the details of the superstructure, for 
 the theological foundation of the building. We may grant 
 to Schopenhauer that theology stands masked behind Kant's 
 doctrine of the Categorical Imperative. But our study of the 
 English Intellectualists — Kant's next of kin — enables us to 
 recognise that theology as the Platonist theology of the com- 
 munion of man's mind with God's mind rather than that of 
 obedience to God as a superior who issues commands armed 
 with sanctions — the theology of the Freedom of the Gospel, 
 as Smith puts it, rather than that of the Bondage of 
 the Law. 
 
 I think I have now said enough to explain the central 
 doctrine of Cudworth and his school in its relationship to the 
 " mythology " of Plato on the one side and to the " formalism " 
 of Kant and of T. H. Green on the other side. Let me add 
 the observation that Cudworth and his school can hai'dly be 
 said to make the Theory of Morals an independent subject. 
 They make it merely an illustration of their Theory of Know- 
 ledge. Moral good is simply an intelligihile, on the same 
 footing as the other Iheai, or Eternal Keasons, required by the 
 epistemology of the school. Cudworth's Eternal and Immutable 
 Morality has much more to say about mathematical Truth than 
 about Eight and Wrong. " Obligation " is treated merely as a 
 
 • 
 
 1 Maxwell's Obligation of the Law of Nature, p. 68 (Appendix to his edition of 
 Cumberland). ^ o.c. p. 85. 
 
516 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 case of " clear intelligibility," and the perception of it assimi- 
 lated to the self-evidence of mathematical principles. Duty is 
 clearly perceived by Keflection, just as Triangularity is. This 
 characteristic of the System of Cudworth and his associates — 
 that their Theory of Morals is but a corollary — and is carefully 
 kept in the subordinate position of a mere corollary — of the 
 Theory of Knowledge, is also a characteristic of the English 
 System which, in our own day, represents that of the Cam- 
 bridge Platonists. T. H. Green's Moral Theory is closely 
 bound up with, and indeed, except so far as " contaminated " 
 by utilitarianism, identical with, his epistemology — an epistem- 
 ology which, as I have tried to indicate, has close affinity with 
 that of Cudworth and his associates, inasmuch as it includes, 
 as theirs does, a proof of the existence of God — is theology, or 
 epistemology, indifferently. Green's Prolegomena and Cud- 
 worth's Eternal and Imniutable Morality are books which 
 should be read in connection ; and, in reading them together, 
 let the reader take as his guide the thought that the theology 
 of Green, as well as that of Cudworth, is ecstatic, not juridical. 
 The critic's problem in interpreting the Philosophy of Green 
 is that of interpreting a product of the Eenaissance — of the 
 revival of Christian Platonism — I had almost said a late-born 
 product of the Eenaissance ; but the Eenaissance, after all, is 
 not circumscribed by dates — it is always with us as a reno- 
 vating principle, as a vivid spirit craving for the freedom of 
 personal experience. 
 
 Platonism is a temper as well as a doctrine ; and in 
 Cudworth and his associates, as in their Alexandrine pre- 
 decessors, it is even more a temper than a doctrine — an 
 enthusiastic mystical temper, always longing passionately for 
 intuition, always ready to accept the clearness of passionate 
 intuition as Standard of Truth in Divine Things: "Nature 
 itself plainly intimates to us," says Cudworth,^ that there is 
 some such absolutely perfect Being, which, though not incon- 
 ceivable, yet is incomprehensible to our finite understandings, 
 by certain passions which it hath implanted in us, that 
 otherwise would want an object to display themselves upon ; 
 namely, those of devout veneration, adoration, and admiration, 
 together with a kind of ecstasy and pleasing horror ; which, 
 
 ^ Intell. System, ii. p. 519. 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 517 
 
 in the silent language of nature, seem to speak thus much to 
 us that there is some object in the world, so much bigger and 
 vaster than our mind and thoughts, that it is the very same 
 to them that the ocean is to narrow vessels ; so that when 
 they have taken into themselves as much as they can by con- 
 templation, and filled up all their capacity^ there is still an 
 immensity of it left without which cannot enter in for want 
 of room to receive it, and therefore must be apprehended after 
 some other strange and more mysterious manner, namely, by 
 their being, as it were, plunged into it, and swallowed up or 
 lost in it." Similarly, More appeals ^ to the natural remorse 
 of conscience, to good hope, and to reverence and worship, as 
 proofs of the existence of God ; presenting the faculty of 
 " Divine Sagacity " — the birth of a " Holy Life " — as " ante- 
 cedaneous to Eeason " — άττλωσον σβαντόν, simplify thyself, he 
 says,^ and walk by the " easie Sagacity," " the simple light of 
 the Divine Love " ; while Norris lays it down ^ that " the 
 mind which sees the Divine Essence must be totally and 
 thoroughly absolved from all commerce with the corporeal 
 senses, either by Death, or some ecstatical and rapturous 
 abstraction " ; and Smith rests his belief in God and Immor- 
 tality far more on the certitude of the Heart than of the 
 Head. To these devout Platonists God and Immortality are 
 simply ivants — wants of the practical volitional part of us, 
 for the sake of which, after all, the thinking part thinks. A 
 God fashioned logically, in such a way as to satisfy the think- 
 ing part alone — that is, fashioned by the thinking part 
 making its own satisfaction its end — will be a God who does 
 not satisfy the volitional part, and consequently cannot, in the 
 long run, be maintained. We have much to learn from the 
 Platonists who, by laying stress on the mere want of a God, 
 suggest that the logical faculty ought not to be allowed to 
 have the last word in theology.^ 
 
 That Platonism is a temper is brought home to us by 
 nothing in the History of Philosophy more clearly than by 
 the development of Berkeley's mind. His early thought 
 
 ^ Antidote against Atheism, book i. ch. 10. p. 29. 
 2 Defence of the Moral Cabbala^ ch. 1, p. 3 55. 
 ^ Reason and Religion, p. 3. * 
 
 '^ I would refer, in this connection, to a remarkable Essay on "Reflex Action 
 and Theism," by Professor W. James, in his volume, The Will to Believe. 
 
518 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 moved on lines laid down by Locke. In the New Theory of 
 Vision (1709) and Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), 
 works of his early manhood, he appears as the mid-link 
 between Locke and Hume in the sensationalistic succession. 
 His interest, at this period, is mainly scientific, although there 
 is a theological reference even in this early work which 
 distinguishes it from the work of either Locke or Hume. 
 Experience, though interpreted according to the principles of 
 the Lockian Critique, is yet " the Language of God " — Male- 
 branche's doctrine of " seeing all things in God " doubtless 
 influences him. In The New Theory and The Principles 
 Berkeley may be said to adopt sensationalistic doctrine en 
 Platonicien. But see how this Platonist temper, showing 
 itself even in works written chiefly under the influence of 
 Locke, hurries the man away from science into action, rouses 
 him into sympathy — always, be it noted, practical and 
 statesmanlike — with the miseries of the Irish people, carries 
 him across the Atlantic on his enthusiastic mission to found a 
 college which should be the centre of evangelical work among 
 the American aborigines. The scheme failed ; he returned, 
 disappointed, but not disillusioned, to devote the remainder of 
 his life to the advocacy of philanthropic schemes — and to 
 write that wonderful Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections 
 and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-water, in which 
 the practical Platonism of his nature, pent up, as age and a 
 fatal disorder condemned him to greater retirement, found 
 natural relief in dogmatic expression. It is in Siris that 
 Berkeley appears as the latest adherent of the school of Cud- 
 worth and More But what, it may be well asked, is the 
 connection between Tar-water (which Berkeley recommends as 
 a panacea) and Platonism ? The answer is, that tar, the exuda- 
 tion of the pine, is the purest vehicle of that " invisible fire or 
 Spirit of the universe " by the agency of which all things live : 
 the introduction of an additional amount of this vital cosmic 
 principle into the human system by means of a decoction of tar 
 has the effect of heightening the bodily powers and expelling 
 all diseases. That there is such a vital principle of the Universe 
 is shown to be the only hypothesis consistent with that Platonism 
 which — to adopt More's phrase with a slight alteration — is " the 
 soul of the Philosophy of which * modern science ' is the body." 
 
THE CAMBKIDGE PLATONISTS 519 
 
 Let me close this work with two quotations from Siris — 
 eloquent utterances of the Platonist temper : — 
 
 It might very well be thought serious trifling to tell my 
 readers, that the greatest men had ever a high esteem for Plato ; 
 whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind ; 
 whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages ; which 
 supplied patriots, magistrates, and law-givers, to the most flourish- 
 ing states, as well as fathers to the Church, and doctors to the 
 schools. Albeit in these days, the depths of that old learning are 
 rarely fathomed, and yet it were happy for these lands, if our 
 young nobility and gentry, instead of modern maxims, would 
 imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. ... It may be 
 modestly presumed there are not many among us, even of those 
 who are called the better sort, who have more sense, virtue, and 
 love of their country than Cicero, who, in a letter to Atticus, 
 could not forbear exclaiming, Socrates et Socratici viri I nunquam 
 vobis gratiam referam. Would to God many of our countrymen 
 had the same obligations to those Socratic writers ! Certainly 
 where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is 
 best learnt from the writings of Plato. . . . Proclus, in the first 
 book of his commentary on the Theology of Plato, observes that, 
 as in the mysteries, those who are initiated, at first meet with 
 manifold and multiform gods, but being entered and thoroughly 
 initiated, they receive the divine illumination, and participate in 
 the very Deity ; in like manner, if the Soul looks abroad, she 
 beholds the shadows and images of things ; but returning into 
 herself she unravels and beholds her own essence : at first she 
 seemeth only to behold herself, but having penetrated further she 
 discovers the mind. And again, still further advancing into the 
 innermost Sanctuary of the Soul she contemplates the O^dv ykvos. 
 And this, he saith, is the most excellent of all human acts, in the 
 silence and repose of the faculties of the Soul to tend upwards to 
 the very Divinity ; to approach and be clearly joined with that 
 which is ineff'able and superior to all beings. When come so high 
 as the first principle she ends her journey and rests.^ 
 
 * •5ί• -X- -Jt -X- * 
 
 Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated 
 upon God, the Human Mind, and the Summum Bonum, may 
 possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably 
 make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.^ 
 
 1 Siris, §§ 332, 333. « o.c. § 350. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adam, Mr., on Plato's attitude to doctrine 
 of Immortality of the Soul, 71 
 on circle of the Same and the Other, 
 
 143 
 on the position of the Throne of 
 Άvάyκη in the Myth of Er, 166, 167 
 on the Pillar of Light in the Myth 
 
 of Er, 169 
 on the astronomy of the Politicus 
 
 Myth, and the Great Year, 198 
 on άωροι, 200 
 
 on allegorisation of Homer, 233 
 on the φύλακ€$ of the Republic and the 
 Hesiodic Daemons, 436 
 Adam Smith, Dr. G,, on allegorical inter- 
 pretation, 236, 237 
 Aeschylus, attitude of, to doctrine of 
 
 Immortality of the Soul, 63, 64 
 Aesop's Fables, at once African Beast- 
 tales and Parables, 16 
 Agyrtae, 70 
 Αίθ-ήρ, in Epinomis, de Oodo, Meteorol., 
 
 438, 439 
 Albertus, on the Earthly Paradise, 105 
 Alfraganus, Dante's use of, 365 
 Allegorical interpretation. Dr. G. Adam 
 Smith on, 236, 237 
 Dr. Bigg on, 236 
 Hatch on, 236 
 of Myths, by Plotinus and Neo-Plato- 
 
 nists, 237 if. 
 St. Paul authorises, 237 
 Chrysostom's opinion of, 237 
 of Myths, Plato's judgment on, 20, 242 
 of Myths, Grote on, 232, 234, 243 
 Neo-Platonic, Zeller's opinion of, 242 
 Dante's, 244 
 Allegorical tales deliberately made, 16 
 -...—Allegorisation of Homer, 231 ff. 
 by the Stoics, 233, 234 
 Plutarch on, 231, 232 
 by Stoics, Cicero on, 233 
 Mr. Adam on, 233 • 
 
 Allegorisation of Old Testament, Philo's, 
 234 flf. 
 by Christian Fathers, 236, 237 
 
 Allegory of Castle of Medina, Spenser's, 
 257 
 in Purgaiorio, xxix., 257 
 of the Cave, Plato's, 250 ff. 
 of the Disorderly Crew, Plato's, 253 ff. 
 ^Ανάβασις, takes the place of κατάβασι$ 
 in eschatology, 352, 353, 367 
 Stoical doctrine of the levity of the 
 Soul contributed to, 380 
 Άνάμνησι$, doctrine of, 343 ff. 
 Άνάμνησκ, ^ρω$, φιλοσοφία, 341 ff. 
 Ανάμνηση, Platonic, Dieterich on, 158 
 compared with Dante's mythology of 
 Lethe and Eunoe, 158 
 Angels, Jewish doctrine of, and Greek 
 
 doctrine of Daemons, 450 
 Apocalypse of Paul, Dr. M. E. James on, 
 
 364 
 Apocalypse, the astronomical, 361 ff. 
 relation of, to Sacramental Cults, 
 365-8 
 Apuleius^ his interpretation of the Ulysses 
 Myth, 241, 242 
 demonology of, 445 ff. 
 Aquinas, St. Thomas, on the Earthly 
 
 Paradise, 104 
 Archer-Hind, Mr., his Timaeus quoted, 
 
 269 
 Aristippus, Henricus, translated Phaedo 
 
 and Meno in 1156, 102 
 Aristotle and Eudemus echo Timaeus, 90 
 
 c, 295 
 Aristotle, misapprehends the Timaeus, 269 
 his God, 355 
 
 poetised astronomy, 163, 164 
 his poetised astronomy, influence of, 
 
 on Dante, 163, 164 
 his supposed tomb near Chalcis, 153 
 Plato's καλλίτΓολα misunderstood by, 
 
 58 
 gives up ideas of a Personal God and 
 of Personal Immortality of the Soul, 
 53 
 Aristotelian astronomy, 354 
 Astronomy, part played by, in Poetry, 
 163 
 
 521 2 L 2 
 
622 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Atlantis Myth and maritime discovery, 
 
 468 
 Axiochus, the, date and characteristics of, 
 110 
 places the world of the departed in the 
 southern hemisphere of the earth, 
 110 
 singular in its localisation of the ireUov 
 αληθείας, 358 
 
 Bacon, his allegorical interpretation of 
 Myths, 242 
 his definition of Poetry, 387 
 
 Bacon, Koger, on the Earthly Paradise, 105 
 
 Berkeley, his Siris characterised and 
 quoted, 518, 519 
 as Platonist, 517 S. 
 
 Bernard, his translation of Kant's Kritik 
 d. Urtheilskraft quoted, 222 flP. 
 
 Bigg, Dr., on allegorisation of Homer by 
 the Stoics, 233 
 on allegorical interpretation, 236 
 on Myth of Cupid and Psyche, 245 
 
 Boeckh, referred to for Plato's astronomy, 
 354 
 
 Book of the Dead, 130 
 
 Bosanquet, Prof. B., on " present " as " ex- 
 tended time," 56 
 
 Bran, The Voyage of, referred to for 
 connection between notions of metem- 
 psychosis, metamorphosis, and preg- 
 nancy without male intervention, 
 304 
 
 Brownell, C. L., quoted for Japanese 
 story of origin of tea, 14 
 
 Brimetto Latini, on the infernal rivers, 
 103 
 
 Buddhism, attitude of, to belief in Im- 
 mortality, 301 
 
 Budge, Dr. , on Book of the Dead, &Q 
 on a prehistoric form of burial in 
 Egypt, 378 
 
 Bunbury, on the geography of the Atlantis 
 Myth, 466 fiF. 
 
 Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, an allegory 
 and also a myth, 16, 246 
 
 Burnet, Prof., on the σφόνδυλοί of the 
 orrery in Myth of Er, 165 
 referred to on Plato's astronomy, 354 
 on the Poem of Parmenides, 351 
 on the monsters and " organic com- 
 binations " of Empedocles, 409 
 
 Bury, Prof., on spread of Orphic cult, 66 
 
 Butcher, Prof., his Aristotle's Theory of 
 Poetry and Fine Art referred to, 391 
 
 Butler, on Necessity and Freedom, 172 
 
 Bywater, Prof. , on the Epinomis, 439 
 
 Caird, Dr. E., on Kant's Ideas of Keason, 
 
 quoted, 48 
 Callaway, Nursery Tales of the Zulus, 
 
 quoted, 8-10 
 
 Callaway, on one-legged people ; cf. Myth 
 told by Aristophanes in Symposium, 
 408 
 --<iK:!ambridge Platonists, their learning, > 
 475 flf. 
 influenced in two directions, by Philo 
 and by Plotinus respectively, 479 ff. 
 maintain that Moses taught the motion 
 
 of the Earth, 478, 489 
 their enthusiasm for the new astronomy, 
 
 486 fiF. 
 their science, 486 ff. 
 their central doctrine, the Doctrine of 
 Ideas as theory of union of man 
 with God in knowledge and conduct, 
 494, 495 
 go back to Plato the mythologist rather 
 
 than to Plato the dialectician, 494 
 their epistemology, 502 
 their epistemology, derived from the 
 doctrine οϋδέαι "mythologically" set 
 forth, explains their theory of Reason 
 as Moral Faculty, 503 ff. 
 their discussion of the relation of God's 
 " Will" to his "Wisdom and Good- 
 ness," 505 ff. 
 their doctrine of Categorical Imperative, 
 
 512 ff. 
 enable us to connect the " formalism " 
 of Kant and Green with the " myth- 
 ology" of the Phaedrus and Sym- 
 posium, 515 
 Campbell, Prof., on Protagoras Myth, 
 
 221 
 Cams, his Gesch. d. Zoologie referred to, 17 
 Catastrophes, doctrine of, in Plato and 
 
 the Peripatetics, 196 
 Categorical Imperative, doctrine of, in ■ 
 Cambridge Platonists, 512 ff. 
 Kant's doctrine of, criticised by 
 Schopenhauer, 514 
 Categories of the Understanding and 
 Moral Virtues, Plato's mythological 
 "deduction" of, 50 
 Categories of the Understanding, mytho- 
 logical deduction of, 337 ff. 
 the Forms seen in the Super-celestial 
 Place explained as, 339 ff. 
 Cave, Plato's Allegory of, 250 ff. 
 an allegory and also a myth, 16 
 its meaning, 56 
 Schwanitz on, 252 
 Couturat on, 252 
 Cebetis Tabula, 245 
 
 Chalcidius, translated the Timaeus, 102 
 quoted on Daemons, 436 
 his version of the Timaeus, how far 
 used by Dante, 468 
 Charles, Prof. R. H., his editions of 
 Secrets of Enoch and Ascension of 
 Isaiah, referred to, 361, 362 
 Choice of Hercules, 2, 245 
 
INDEX 
 
 523 
 
 Church, Dean, on The Letter to Kan 
 
 Grande, 18 
 Cicero, eschatology of his Somnium 
 
 Scipionis and Tusc. Disp., 353 
 Circe and Calypso Myths, Neo-Platonic 
 
 interpretation of, 240 if. 
 Claudian, on the Earthly Paradise, 105 
 "Clear and Distinct Ideas," 509 
 Clough, quoted to illustrate doctrine of 
 κόλασι$ and κάθαρσί$ in Gorgias, 
 126 
 Coelo, de, influence of, in the Paradiso, 
 
 353 
 Coleridge, on " poetic faith, " 6 
 on deep sky akin to feeling, 22 
 quoted for the statement that a poem 
 
 ought not to be all poetry, 34 
 on Plato's doctrine of the pre-existence 
 
 of the Soul, 61 
 on Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations 
 
 of Immortality, 61 
 his Anima Poetae quoted, 258 
 on Dante's Canzone xx., 258 
 regards the Platonic doctrine of Pre- 
 existence as mythical, 344 
 holds that Poetry may exist without 
 metre, 389, 390 
 Comparetti, on gold tablets of Thurii and 
 Petelia, 130, 156 
 on the KaZeicala, 204 
 Conscience, Cardinal Newman on, as con- 
 necting principle between creature 
 and Creator, 447 
 Guardian Daemon as, 447, 448 
 Conybeare, Mr., his PMlo, de Vita Con- 
 
 templativa, referred to, 234 
 Cook, Mr. A. B., on the Sicilian triskeles, 
 and the Myth told by Aristophanes 
 in Symposium, 408 
 Cornford, Mr. F. M., on the φΰΚακΐ^ of 
 the Republic and the Hesiodic 
 Daemons, 436 
 Courthope, Mr., his definition of Poetry 
 
 quoted, 36 
 Couturat, on doctrine of Immortality of 
 the Soul as held by Plato, 61, 70 
 Timaeus totus mythicus est, 197 
 on the Cave, 252 
 
 holds that the whole doctrine of lUat 
 is mythical, 348 
 Cratylus, the, on the Philosopher Death, 
 127, 128 
 on the Sirens, 128 
 CTQVLZQT,Plotinus de Pulchritudine, quoted, 
 
 240, 241 
 Cud worth, his criticism of Descartes com- 
 pared with criticism of the same 
 tendency in Prof. Ward's Naturalism 
 and Agnosticism, 477, 478 • 
 conceives God spatially, 487 
 supplies the link between the epistemo- 
 logical theism of Green and the 
 
 mythology of the Timaexts and 
 Phaedrus, 498 
 Cudworth, his criticism of the sensational- 
 ism of Hobbes, 497, 498 
 his criticism of Descartes, 509 fl". 
 Cultus Myth, a variety of the Aetiological 
 
 Story, illustrated, 13 
 Cumberland, criticised by Maxwell, 513 ff. 
 Cumont, his Mysteres de Mithra, 365 
 his criticism of Dieterich's Mithras- 
 liturgie, 365 
 Cupid and Psyche, Myth of, Mr. A. Lang 
 on, 245 
 Dr. Bigg on, 245 
 
 Daemon, Guardian, doctrine of, connected 
 
 with belief in re-incarnation of Souls 
 
 of ancestors, 449, 450 
 as Conscience, 447, 448 
 Daemon, the, of Socrates, 445, 448 ; cf. 
 
 2, 3 
 Daemons, doctrine of, 434 ff. 
 
 two kinds of, recognised by Plato, 436 ff. 
 Dante, Letter to Kan Grande, quoted for 
 
 distinction between literal and alle- 
 gorical truth, 18-19 
 Convivio, quoted for literal, allegoric, 
 
 moral, and anagogic interpretation, 
 
 19-20 
 his *' personal religion," 19 
 expresses Transcendental Feeling in last 
 
 canto of Par. and 25th sonnet of 
 
 V. N., 23 
 F. N. sonnet 24, quoted for effect 
 
 produced similar to that produced 
 
 by Plato's Eschatological Myths, 26 
 F. iV. sonnet 11, quoted to illustrate 
 
 the "magic" of certain kinds of 
 
 Poetry, 38 
 Hell, Mount of Purgatory, and Earthly 
 
 Paradise, compared with the Tartarus 
 
 and True Surface of the Earth in the 
 
 Phaedo, 101 ff. 
 Quaestio de Aqua et Terra, 102 
 the tears of this world flow in the 
 
 rivers of his Hell, 103 
 singular in locating Purgatory on the 
 
 slopes of the Mountain of the Earthly 
 
 Paradise, 104 
 Mount of Purgatory sighted by Ulysses, 
 
 104 
 his use of the teleological geography of 
 
 Orosius, 105, 106 
 his mythological explanation of the 
 
 distribution of plants, 106, 107 
 the human race created to make good 
 
 the loss of the fallen angels, 106 
 "the seven P's," 130 
 the three parts ot his Ό. G. correspond 
 
 to the "Three Ways," 132 
 Lethe and Eunoe, 154 ff. 
 Earthly Paradise, 154 ff. 
 
524 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Dante, his mythology of Lethe and Eunoe 
 
 compared with the Platonic ανά- 
 μνηση, 158 
 KadapaLS by gradual ascent of Mount of 
 
 Purgatory takes the place of καθ- 
 άρσια by metempsychosis, 159 
 appearance of Saints in the moving 
 
 Spheres, 165 
 and the Timaeus, 210 
 his allegorisation of the story of the 
 
 three Marys, 244 
 Inferno, iv. 46-43, and Plato's Cave, 
 
 253 
 Coleridge on, 258 
 "suppressed" symbolism in, 258 
 Procession in Purg. xxix. ff., 339 
 on relation of Philosophy to Science, 
 
 342 
 compares the Platonic ί5έαι to " Gods," 
 
 347 
 on the number of Beatrice, 350 
 Paradiso, latest example of the astro- 
 nomical apocalypse, 353 
 Convivio, quoted for his astronomical 
 
 system, 164, 355 if. 
 on influence of Planets in producing 
 
 temperaments, 358, 359 
 regards his vision of Paradiso as having 
 
 sacramental value, 367 
 theory in the de MonarcMa compared 
 
 with that of the Republic and Atlantis 
 
 Myth, 454 
 his knowledge of the Timaeus through 
 
 the version and commentary of 
 
 Chalcidius, 468 
 Darwin, on the feebleness of imagination 
 
 in the lower animals, 4 
 his Expression of the Emotions in Man 
 
 and Animals referred to, 342 
 Dead, Book of the, Egyptian, 66 
 Delphi, place assigned to, by the side of 
 
 the Platonic State, 58 
 Descartes, criticised by Cambridge Pla- 
 
 tonists, as ignoring the ' ' plastic 
 
 principle," 478, 493 
 criticised by Cudworth, 478, 491, 493, 
 
 509 ff. 
 Dialogue, the Platonic, two elements in 
 
 — Argumentative Conversation and 
 
 Myth, 1 
 Dieterich, on Orphic κατάβασίί eb 
 
 Αΐδον, 66, 154 
 on refrigerium, 161 
 on Mithraic κλΐμαξ έπτάττυΧος, 162 
 his Mithrasliturgie referred to for 
 
 influence of Posidonius, 352 
 his Mithrasliturgie, 365 ff. 
 Dill, Professor, referred to for mixture 
 
 of Science and Myth in Macrobius, 
 
 101 
 on Plutarch's allegorisation of Egyptian 
 
 Myths, 232 
 
 Dill, Professor, quoted on Macrobius' Com- 
 mentary on the Somnium Scipionis,Zl• 9 
 
 Disorderly Crew, Plato's Allegory of, 
 253 ff. 
 
 Dramatists, the Athenian, their attitude 
 to the doctrine of the Immortality 
 of the Soul, 62 ff. 
 take the Family, rather than the In- 
 dividual, as the moral unit, 63 
 
 Dream-consciousness, induced by Poetry, - 
 382 ff. 
 
 "Dream-thing," the, illustrated from 
 Wordsworth's Prelude, 153 
 
 Dream-world, the, of the primitive story- 
 teller characterised, 5 
 
 During, holds that the Phaedrus Myth is 
 a " Programme," 338 
 
 Earth, rotundity of, recognised by Plato 
 in Phaedo, 94 
 central position of, in Phaedo, 94 
 
 Earthly Paradise, the, 103 ff. 
 
 of Dante and medieval belief, 104 ff. 
 Dante's, 154 ff. 
 
 Earthquake and thunder accompany new 
 birth in Myth of Er and Dante, 
 Purgatorio, xxi., 159 
 
 Ecstasy, Plotinus quoted on, 385 
 
 as understood by Cambridge Platonists, 
 480 ff. 
 
 "Empirical" distinguished from "Tran- 
 scendental" Feeling, 389 
 
 Enoch, Secrets of, referred to, 361 ff. 
 
 Eothen, Kinglake's, quoted to illustrate 
 allegory of Disorderly Crew, 254 tf. 
 
 Epictetus on Guardian Daemon as Con- 
 science, 448, 449 
 
 Epiraetheus, contrasted with Prometheus, 
 225 ff. 
 
 Epinomis, demonology of, 445 
 
 Er, Myth of, place of, in the Republic, 64, 
 72, 73 
 great philosophical question raised in, 
 169 ff. 
 
 Έύνοία% θβόί in Mithraic doctrine, 162 
 
 Evil, origin of, mythically explained in 
 Politicus Myth, 197, 198 
 presence of, in Heaven, 367 
 
 Exeter Book, the, on the Earthly Paradise, 
 105 
 
 Expression, importance attached by Plato 
 to, as reacting on that which is ex- 
 pressed, 113 
 reaction of, on that which is expressed, 
 342 
 
 Eyes, the final cause of, 356 
 
 Fairbanks, Mr. Α., on cremation and 
 
 άνάβασις, 379 
 Fall, the, of Souls as conceived by the 
 
 Neo- Platonists, 360 
 Ficino, on the Narcissus Myth, 240 
 
INDEX 
 
 525 
 
 Flinders Petrie, Prof., on Book of the 
 Dead, 66 
 referred to for Book of the Bead, 130 
 
 Galton, Mr. F., on power of visualisation, 
 
 381 
 Gardner, Prof. P., on thiasi, 71 
 on the story of Zagreus, 409 
 on Prophecy, 431 
 on new epoch opened for Hellas by 
 
 Alexander, 454 
 on Apocalypses, 455 
 Gebhart {Vltalie ^nystique), on Dante's 
 
 "personal religion," 19 
 Gems, mythological theory of origin of, 
 in Phaedo, 94, 95 
 Dante on origin of virtues of, 95 
 Geology of Attica in Atlantis Myth, 
 
 465 flf. 
 Gfrorer {Urchristenthum), on Philo's al- 
 legorical method, 234 if. 
 Ghosts, H. More on, 96 
 Gildersleeve, Prof., on Pindar, 01. ii. 
 
 75, 68 
 Glaucon in Rep. 608 D, attitude of, to 
 doctrine of Immortality of the Soul, 
 64 
 Goblet d'Alviella, on connection between 
 Egyptian and Greek guide-books for 
 the use of the dead, 66 
 on Initiation as Death and Ke- birth, 
 377 ff. 
 God, a Personal, is a Part, not the Whole, 
 
 53 
 Goethe, quoted to illustrate the " magic " 
 
 of certain kinds of Poetry, 37 
 Gollancz, his edition of the Exeter Book, 
 
 105 
 Good, the, not one of the objects of 
 Knowledge, but its condition, 59, 
 cf. 44 
 Gray, Sir George, his version of Maori 
 story of Children of Heaven and 
 Earth, quoted, 11-13 
 Green, T. H., his doctrine of "the Presence 
 of the Eternal Consciousness in my 
 Consciousness," its Platonic proven- 
 ance, 486, 493 if. 
 his Eternal Consciousness compared 
 with the Ideal World of Cambridge 
 Platonists, 501 
 his Philosophy a revival of Christian 
 Platonism, 516 
 Grote, on the Cultus Myth, 13 
 
 on doctrine of Immortality of the Soul 
 
 as held by Plato, 61 
 on thiasi, 71 
 on the general characteristics of the 
 
 Politicus Myth, 196 • 
 
 on the Protagoras Myth, 220 
 on allegorical interpretation, 243 
 on story of Zagreus, 409 
 
 Gummere, Prof., makes metrical form 
 essential to Poetry, 391 
 
 Hades, Voyage of Odysseus to, of Orphic 
 
 origin, 66 
 Harrison, Miss, on the Cultus Myth, 14 
 on the Sirens, 127 
 her Prolegomena to Study of Greek 
 
 Religion referred to, 154 
 on Dante's Eunoe, 161 
 on story of Zagreus, 409 
 Hatch, on allegorical interpretation, 236 
 
 on Angels and Daemons, 450 
 Heavens, motion of, determines sublun- 
 ary events, 196 
 motion of, in the Politicus Myth, and 
 in the accepted astronomy, 198 
 Hegel, his view of the δαιμόνων of 
 Socrates, 3 
 on doctrine of Immortality of the Soul 
 
 as held by Plato, 61 
 on the Soul as Universal, 228 
 Helbig, on Prometheus sarcophagus in 
 
 Capitol, 229 
 Heraclitus, his ξηρή ψυχή as understood 
 
 by Neo-Platonists, 240, 360 
 Hesiod on the Five Ages, 434, 435 
 
 his Daemons, 434, 435 
 Hierocles, on bodies terrestrial, aerial, and 
 
 astral, 439 
 History, relation of mythology to, accord- 
 ing to Plato, 94 
 Hobbes, his Social Covenant a " founda- 
 tion-myth," 171 
 his disproof of Spirit or Incorporeal 
 
 Substance criticised by More, 492 
 his sensationalism criticised by Cud- 
 worth, 497, 498 
 Holland, Philemon, his version of Plut- 
 arch's Moralia, 369, 441 
 Ύπβρονράνως τόττο? of Phaedrus and the 
 Aristotelian God compared, 355 
 
 Idealists, modern English, go back to 
 Plato the mythologist rather than to 
 Plato the dialectician, 494 
 their central doctrine that of the 
 Cambridge Platonists — the Doctrine of 
 Ideas as theory of union of Man with 
 God in knowledge and conduct, 495 
 Ideas, Doctrine of, how far mythical? 
 347 fif. 
 as adopted by Cambridge Platonists 
 and modern English Idealists, 494 
 " Ideas of Reason," Soul, Cosmos, and God, 
 set forth by Plato in Myth, not 
 scientifically, 49 
 mythological representation of, 337 ff. 
 Imagination, rather than Reason, dis- 
 tinguishes man from brute, 4 
 part played by, in the development of 
 human thought, 4-6 
 
526 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Immisch referred to for medieval transla- 
 tion of the Phaedo, 102 
 .Immortality of the Soul, attitude of 
 Simonides, Tyrtaeus, Attic Orators, 
 Dramatists, Aristotle, the Athenian 
 Public, to doctrine of, 61 ff. 
 
 Plato's doctrine of, according to Hegel, 
 Zeller, Grote, Coleridge, Thiemann, 
 Couturat, Jowett, Adam, 61, 62, 
 70, 71 
 
 personal, presented by Plato in Myth, 53 
 
 agnosticism regarding, in the Athens of 
 Plato's day, 61 if. 
 
 conceived by Plato eminently in Myth, 
 61, 73, 74 
 
 Plato's doctrine of, according to Jowett, 
 70 
 
 three sorts of, distinguished, 300 if. 
 
 attitude of Buddhism to belief in, 301 
 "Imperial Hellas," ideal of, in Plato, 
 454 if. 
 
 ideal of, how far it competes with that 
 of Personal Salvation in Plato, 455, 
 456 
 Initiation, as ceremonial Death and Ee- 
 
 birth, 368, 377, 378 
 Ion, Plato's, a study of " Poetic Inspira- 
 tion," 382 
 Isaiah, Ascension of, referred to, 362 
 Islands of the Blessed, 107 if. 
 
 in the Platonic Myths, 108, 109 
 
 in Greek and Celtic mythology, 108 
 
 in Oorgias, identical with "True Surface 
 of the Earth" in Phaedo, and 
 ''Heaven" in Myth of Er, 107-110 
 
 Jackson, Dr. H., on the δαιμόνων of 
 
 Socrates, 3 
 James, Dr. M. R., on Apocalypse of Paul, 
 
 364 
 James, Prof. W., on teleology, 52 
 
 his Varieties of Religious Experience 
 
 referred to, 480 
 his essay on "Reflex Action and 
 Theism " referred to, 517 
 Jevons, Dr., on thiasi, 71 
 
 on the story of Zagreus, 409 
 Johnstone, Mr. P. de L., his Muliammad 
 
 and his Power quoted, 363 
 Jowett, on Imagination and Reason, 4 
 on Plato's attitude to doctrine of Im- 
 
 ^ mortality of the Soul, 70 
 on the general characteristics of the 
 Politicus Myth, 196 
 
 Kaibel, on gold tablets found at Thurii 
 
 and Petelia, 156 
 Kalewala, the, described, 203, 204 
 
 story of the Birth of Iron, in the, 204 flf. 
 German version of, by H. Paul, 204 
 ΚαλλίτΓολυ, Plato's, not an isolated munici- 
 pality, but an Empire-city, 58 
 
 Kant, his distinction between Categories 
 of the Understanding and Ideas of 
 Reason not explicit in Plato's mind, 
 but sometimes implicitly recognised 
 by him, 45 
 his distinction between Categories of 
 the Understanding and Ideas of 
 Reason explained, 45 if. 
 in charging Plato with "transcendental 
 use, or rather misuse, of the Categories 
 of the Understanding," ignores the 
 function of Myth in the Platonic 
 philosophy, 72. 
 his Critique of Judgment quoted, 222 ff. 
 on distinction between the Teleological 
 and the Mechanical explanations of 
 the world, 222 flf. 
 his theology that of the Platonist, 514 
 Kara^aais eh "Αώου, Dieterich on, 154 
 Rohde on, 154 
 Lobeck on, 252 
 the, eschatology of, 351 if. 
 Καθάρσια, poetic, 393 
 King, Mr. J. E., on infant burial, 200, 450 
 Kingsley, Miss, on re-incarnation of souls 
 
 of deceased relatives, 450 
 Knowledge, Theory of, common to Cam- 
 bridge Platonists and modern English 
 Idealists, 495 
 Ktihner, on the δαιμόνων of Socrates, 3 
 
 Land, Prof. J. P. N., on Physiologus, 17 
 Lang, Mr. Α., on Myth of Uranus and 
 Cronus, 11 
 on Myth of Cupid and Psyche, 245 
 on savage analogies for Greek mysteries, 
 378 
 Leibniz, his "Pre-established Harmony" 
 and " Prenatal Choice " in Myth of 
 Er compared, 170 
 describes the doctrine of άνάμνησίί as 
 mythical, 344 
 Lelewel, referred to for position of Earthly 
 
 Paradise, 104 
 Lelut, on the δαιμόνων of Socrates, 3 
 Lethe, the River of, its locality discussed, 
 154 
 Thiemann on locality of, 154 
 not one of the infernal rivers, 154, 168 
 its locality in the Aeneid, 154, 155 
 and Mnemosyne in the Orphic cult, 
 
 156 if. 
 topography of, in Myth of Er, and 
 
 Petelia Tablet compared, 157 
 drinking of, precedes re - incarnation, 
 
 157 
 and Mnemosyne at Oracle of Trophonius, 
 
 160 
 Roscher on references to, 168 
 Liddell, Professor Mark H., makes 
 metrical form essential to Poetry, 
 391, 392 
 
INDEX 
 
 527 
 
 Lie, the, in the Soul, what ? 54 
 Lobeck, Aglaophamus on the ** Cycle of 
 Incarnations," 156 
 on the allegorisation of Homer, 231 
 on story of Zagreus, 409 
 on re -incarnation of souls of deceased 
 relatives, 450 
 Lotze, his distinction between the Reality 
 of Existence and the Reality of 
 Validity, appears in Norris, 500 
 Love song, the " magic "of, 37 
 Lucian on the Stoic "Steep Hill of 
 
 Virtue," 104 
 Lucifer, the Fall of, how made use of by 
 Dante, 106 
 
 Mackinder, Mr. H. J., on "Atlantis," 
 
 466 
 Macrobius, on the Bowl of Dionysus, 239 
 his Commentary on the Somnmm 
 
 Scipionis compared with the Pliae- 
 
 drus Myth, 360 
 on influence of Planets in producing 
 
 temperaments, 359, 360 
 Madness, four kinds of, distiguished in 
 
 Phaedrus, 306, 339 
 "Magic" of certain kinds of Poetry dis- 
 cussed and illustrated, 36, 38 
 Mahomet, Vision of, quoted, 363 
 Malebranche, his doctrine of " seeing all 
 
 all things in God " adopted by 
 
 Norris, 501 
 Make-believe and Belief, 6, 7 
 Mann, Max Friedr., his Bestiaire Divin 
 
 referred to, 17 
 Maoris, their Story of the Children of 
 
 Heaven and Earth quoted, 11-13 
 Marcus Aurelius on the aerial habitat of 
 
 souls, 437, 438 
 on Guardian Daemon as Conscience, 
 
 449 
 Masson, Professor, on Milton's De Idea 
 
 Flatonicd, 348 
 Maximus Tyrius, demonology of, 447, 
 
 448 
 Maxwell, his criticism of Cumberland, 
 
 513 if. 
 his theory of obligation, 514, 515 
 Meadow (λβιμών), the, of the Judgment- 
 Seat, position of, 152 
 Mechanism and Teleology, 508 
 Metempsychosis, and Resurrection, 198 flF. 
 not necessarily connected with notions 
 
 of Retribution and Purification, 
 
 302 if. 
 relation of, to metamorphosis, and to 
 
 conception without male intervention, 
 
 302 if. 
 MeteoTologica, geography of, 467 • 
 Metre and Representation, the place of 
 
 each in Poetry, 388 fF. 
 Millennium, the, H. More on, 97 
 
 Millet's "Sower," 250 
 Milton, adheres to old astronomy in 
 Paradise Lost, 163 
 his Poem De Idea, PlatonicA quemad- 
 modum Aristoteles intellexit, quoted, 
 347 f. 
 Mirror and Bowl of Dionysus, Neo-Platonic 
 
 interpretation of, 239-40 
 Mitchell, Mrs., on Prometheus sarcopha- 
 gus in Capitol, 229 
 Mithras cult, the κλΐμαξ έπτάτΓυ\ο$ of, 
 
 162 
 Mithrasliturgie, Dieterich's, 365 if. 
 Mnemosyne, drinking of, precedes final 
 
 disembodiment of purified soul, 157 
 Models, astronomical, in antiquity, 165 
 Moore, Dr. E., on authenticity of the 
 Quaestio de Aqua et Terra, 102 
 on the geography of Orosius, 105 
 on references in Paradiso to Revelation 
 of St. John, 361 
 More, H., on the Plastic Principle in 
 Nature, 95 fiF. 
 on vehicles, terrestrial, aerial, and 
 
 aethereal, 96 
 on the Millennium, 97 
 a soul must have a vehicle of some 
 
 kind, 97 
 on the efiect upon terrestrial and aerial 
 bodies of the Fire of the Last Day, 
 97, 98 
 on sunspots, 98 
 
 one of his "Myths" quoted, 98 fF. 
 indebtedness of his mythology of aerial 
 daemons to that of the Platonists 
 and Stoics, 99 
 his belief in witchcraft, 100 
 on the number 729, 349 
 his view of the end of the Scripture, 
 
 432 
 his Ρ hilosophickal Poems quoted, 487 AE"., 
 
 496, 505 
 criticises Hobbes's disproof of Incor- 
 poreal Substance, 492 
 Morfill, Professor, his translation of Secrets 
 
 of Enoch referred to, 361 
 Moses Atticus, Plato as, 476 
 Mundo, de, astronomy of, 353 
 
 geography of, 467 
 Murray, Mr. G. G. Α., on Brit. Mus. Gold 
 
 Tablets, 156 
 Myer and Nutt's Voyage of Bran, on 
 conception without male intervention, 
 199 
 Myers, F. W. H., on the δαιμόνων of 
 Socrates, 3 
 makes changes in tension of muscles of 
 the throat essential part of poetic 
 excitation, 393 
 Mysteries, stronghold in Greece of doctrine 
 
 of Immortality, 65 
 Mysticism, Goethe's definition of, 70 
 
528 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Myth, the eschatological, characterised, 
 
 14 
 interpretation of, must be psychological, 
 
 16 
 the vehicle of exposition chosen by 
 
 Plato, when he deals with the 
 
 a priori conditions of conduct and 
 
 science, 49 
 education of children to begin with, 
 
 according to Plato, 53 fif. 
 Plato brings, into conformity with 
 
 science as far as possible, 94 
 not to be taken literally, according to 
 
 Plato, but to be "sung over oneself" 
 
 till the charm of it touches the 
 
 heart, 113 
 aetiological, value attached to, by 
 
 Plato, 201 if. 
 aetiological, in the Kdlewala, 203, 204 
 its two "meanings," 244 
 the Phaedo, motif of, Moral Responsi- 
 bility, 114 
 the Gorgias, Moral Responsibility the 
 
 motif of, 126 
 the Gorgias, its theory of AcoXaais and 
 
 κάθαρσίί — of Punishment and Pardon, 
 
 126, 127 
 the Gorgias, its rendering of the wonder 
 
 and reverence with which man re- 
 gards Death, 127, 128 
 the Gorgias, on the infinite difference 
 
 between vice with large and vice 
 
 with small opportunity, 129 if. 
 distinguished from Allegory and Parable, 
 
 15 
 Myth and Allegory, Westcott on, 243 
 difference between illustrated from 
 
 Spanish chapel fresco, 429 
 Myth and Ritual compared, 58 
 Myths, introduction of, perhaps suggested 
 
 to Plato by certain passages in the 
 
 conversation of Socrates, 2 
 Plato's, appeal to that part of the 
 
 soul which expresses itself, not in 
 
 theoretic, but in value-judgments, 
 
 or rather, value-feelings, 21 
 Plato's, effect produced by, compared 
 
 with that produced by contemplation 
 
 of Nature, 22 
 Plato's, effect produced by, compared 
 
 with that produced hj Poetry 
 
 generally, 22 ff. 
 Plato's, described as Dreams expressive 
 
 of Transcendental Feeling, 42 
 allegorical interpretation of, Plato's 
 
 judgment on, 242 
 allegorical interpretation of, Bacon's, 
 
 242 
 
 Narcissus Myth, Neo-Platonic allegorisa- 
 
 tion of, 239, 240 
 " Necessary " Truth, what ? 504 
 
 Necessity, the throne of, in the Myth of 
 
 Er, where ? 153, 165 ff. 
 Nettleship, R. L., on the lack of organic 
 connection in latter half of Rep. x., 
 73 
 on the νωτον ουρανού, 165 
 Newman, Cardinal, on Conscience as 
 connecting principle between creature 
 and Creator, 447 
 Newton, his Principia quoted for his 
 
 theological belief, 489 ff. 
 Norris, his Reason and Religion referred 
 to, 480, 481, 498 ff 
 on ecstasy and the holy life, 481 
 on the a priori in knowledge, 499 
 distinguishes, as Lotze does, between 
 Reality of Existence and of Validity, 
 500 
 his Ideal World compared with T. H. 
 
 Green's Eternal Consciousness, 501 
 adopts Malebranche's doctrine of " See- 
 ing all things in God," 501 
 on moral obligation, 503 
 Number 729, 349, 350 
 
 7, instances given of its importance, 360 
 
 Obligation, how Reason imposes, accord- 
 ing to Platonism, 503 
 
 Old Testament, Philo's allegorisation of, 
 234 ff. 
 
 Olympiodorus on the infernal rivers, 168 
 
 Optimism and Pessimism, 506 ff. 
 
 Orators, Attic, their attitude to the 
 doctrine of the Immortality of the 
 Soul, 61 ff. 
 
 Orosius and the doctrine of one continu- 
 ous οίκονμυένη, 105 
 
 Orphic cult, spread of, 65 ff. 
 Plato's attitude to, QQ ff. 
 Philosophy described by Plato in terms 
 
 of, 69 
 Lethe and Mnemosyne in, 156 ff. 
 
 Orphic κατάβασίί eis "Αίδου, 66 
 
 Orphic priests, as distinguished from 
 Orphic doctrine, Plato's attitude to, 
 70 
 
 Orrery, the, in the Myth of Er, 1 65 
 
 Pandora Myth, in Hesiod, 238 
 Parable, Reville on, 250 
 Parables, the, of the New Testament, 250 
 Paradiso, the, latest example of the 
 
 "Astronomical Apocalypse," 364 
 Parmenides, the celestial eschatology of 
 
 the opening lines of his Poem, 351 
 Paul, H., his version of the Kalewala, 204 
 Pausanias on Lethe and Mnemosyne at 
 
 oracle of Trophonius, 160 
 YieUov aX77^eias, the, 355 ff. 
 Plotinus on, 357 
 Plutarch on, 357, 358 
 the Axiochus on, 358 
 
INDEX 
 
 529 
 
 Personal God, idea of, presented by Plato 
 
 in Myth, 53 
 Pessimism and Optimism, 506 ΰ. 
 Phaedo, hydrostatics of, criticised by 
 Aristotle, 102 
 medieval translation of, 102 
 PMedrus Myth, the, celestial or astro- 
 nomical mise en seine of its eschat- 
 ology, 350 ff. 
 Philo, his allegorical interpretation of the 
 Old Testament, 18, 234 flF. 
 on the number 729, 349 
 on Jewish Angels and Greek Daemons, 
 
 450 
 influence of, on Cambridge Platonists, 
 480 
 Philosophy as Life and Immortality, 428, 
 
 429 
 Physiologus described and quoted, 17 
 Pilgrim's Progress, at once an Allegory 
 and a Myth, 246 
 quoted, 246 ff. 
 -Pillar of Light, the, in the Myth of Er, 
 
 discussed, 152, 167 ff. 
 Pindar, his eschatology, QQ S. 
 
 Plato's debt to, 68 
 Pitra, on Physiologus, refeiTed to, 17 
 Planets, influence of, in producing tem- 
 peraments, 358 ff. 
 Rastic Principle, the, ignored by Des- 
 cartes, 478, 493 
 explains, for Cambridge Platonists, the 
 existence of " vehicles " without 
 which the "Eternal Consciousness" 
 could not "reproduce" itself, 493 
 of Cambridge Platonists compared with 
 the " Spiritual Principle " of modern 
 English Idealists, 494 
 Plato, as Moses Atticus, 210 
 his attitude to Teleology, 224 ff. 
 his attitude to the allegorisation of 
 
 Myths, 231 
 his astronomy, 354 
 Platonism, as temper, illustrated by 
 
 Berkeley's life, 517 ff. 
 Piatt, Mr. Α., on Plato and Geology, 
 
 465 ff. 
 Pliny, on Lethe and Mnemosyne at oracle 
 
 of Trophonius, 160 
 Plotinus, attitude of to the " Problem of 
 the Universe," 45 
 his allegorisation of the Myth of Pro- 
 metheus and Pandora, 238 
 his allegorisation of Narcissus Myth, 
 
 239 
 quoted on mirror and bowl of Dionysus, 
 
 360 
 his interpretation of Diotima's allegory, 
 
 428 • 
 
 influence of, on Cambridge Platonists, 
 
 480 ff. 
 on θεωρία and ^pωs (directed to Ιδέαι) 
 
 as constituting the Principle of Life, 
 503, 504 
 Plutarch, on the justice of punishing 
 children for sins of fathers, 63 
 on allegorisation of Homer, 231, 232 
 his Aridaeus - Thespesius Myth, given, 
 
 and commented on, 369 ff. 
 his power of colour-visualisation, 381 
 on vovs,. ψυχή, and σώμα supplied by 
 Sun, Moon, and Earth respectively, 
 440, 441 
 his daemonology, 441 ff. 
 his Timarchus Myth given, 441 ff. 
 " Poetic Truth,' what ? 384 ff. 
 Poetry, chief end of, production and 
 regulation of Transcendental Feeling, 
 33 ff. 
 its effect identical with that produced 
 by other Fine Arts, and sometimes 
 even with that produced by con- 
 templation of Nature and Human 
 Life, and by the memories of Child- 
 hood and Youth, 35 
 a Theory of, 382 ff. 
 Posidonius, influence of, on development 
 of astronomical eschatology, 352 
 on aerial daemons, 438 
 Postgate, Mr. J. P., on the Sirens, 
 
 128 
 Pre-existence and άνάμνησι$, Zeller on, 
 
 343 ff. 
 Pringle-Pattison, Professor A. S., referred 
 to, 52 
 on "Categories in Things," 340 
 "Problem of the Universe," relation of 
 Thought and Transcendental Feeling 
 respectively to, 44, 45 
 attitude of Plotinus to, 45 
 Prometheus, contrasted with Epimetheus, 
 
 225 ff. 
 Prometheus Myth, on Capitoline Sar- 
 cophagus, 228 ff. 
 various versions of, 229 
 lends itself easily to allegorisation, 
 
 230 
 allegorised by Plotinus, 238 
 Prophecy, Professor P. Gardner on, 431, 
 
 433 
 Prophetic Temperament, the, Diotima a 
 study of, 430 ff. 
 Spinoza on, 430, 431 
 Purgatory, Dante's Mount of, and the 
 Stoic "Steep hill of Virtue" com- 
 pared, 104 
 
 Rabelais, quoted in comparison with the 
 Myth told by Aristophanes in Sym- 
 posium, 410 ff. 
 
 Rashdall, Dr., referred to for medieval 
 translation of the Phaedo, 102 
 
 Refrigerium, doctrine of, taken in con- 
 nection with Dante's Eunoe, 161 
 
530 
 
 THE MYTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Religious Consciousness, the, demands a 
 Personal God, 51 
 how opposed to the Scientific Under- 
 standing, 52 if. 
 Renan, on Spanish Chapel fresco, 114 
 Representation and Metre, the place of 
 each in Poetry, 388 ff. 
 ^ Resurrection, doctrine of, 198 ff 
 Revelation of St. John, not an " Astro- 
 nomical Apocalypse," 361 
 Dante little indebted to, 361 
 Reville, on the profound philosophy of 
 Myths, 16 
 on Rite and Myth, 58 
 on Ritual, 256 
 Ritschl, his view of Inspiration, 433 
 . Ritual, compared with Myth, 58 
 with Myth and Allegory, 256 ff. 
 Robertson-Smith, on relation of Myth to 
 
 Ritual, 14 
 Rohde, on Greek agnosticism regarding 
 Immortality of the Soul, 62 
 on Orphic rites, 65 
 on Pindar's eschatology, 67 
 on κατάβασί$ eis "AtSov, 154 
 on refrigerium, 161 
 on άωροι, 200 
 Roscher, on Lethe, 168 
 .'Round People, the, of Aristophanes, com- 
 pared with the Sicilian triskdes, 408 
 compared with Zulu and Arabian one- 
 legged people, 408 
 compared with the monsters of Em- 
 pedocles, 408, 409 
 Rouse, Mr., on votive figures, 153 
 Ruskin, on Spanish Chapel fresco, 114, 
 257 
 
 Sander, on Geography of Atlantis Myth, 
 466 
 
 Scartazzini, on Dante's Purgatory and 
 Earthly Paradise, 104 
 
 Schiller, Mr. F. C. S., on ivipyia ακινησίας, 
 164 
 
 Schleiermacher, on the Protagoras Myth, 
 220, 227 ff. 
 
 Schmidt, on Dante's Quaestio de Aqua et 
 Terra, 103 
 referred to for position of the Earthly 
 Paradise, 104 
 
 Schopenhauer, his Freedom in esse com- 
 pared with Prenatal Choice in Myth 
 of Er, 171 
 his definition of Poetry, 387 
 his criticism of Kant's Categorical Im- 
 perative, 514 
 
 Schwanitz, on Allegory of the Cave, 252 
 
 Scylax, his irepiirXovs referred to, 467 
 
 Seneca's Letter to Marcia, eschatology of, 
 353 
 
 Sensitive Soul, supervenes upon the 
 Vegetative, 40 
 
 Shelley, Adonais quoted for effect pro- 
 duced similar to that produced by 
 Plato's Eschatological Myths, 27 ff. 
 on distinction between poetry and 
 
 prose, 390 
 his Poem, The Recollection, quoted, 
 395 
 Simonides, his attitiide to doctrine of 
 
 Immortality of the Soul, 62 
 Sirens, the, associated with Death, 127 
 Miss Harrison on, 127 
 Mr. J. P. Postgate on, 128 
 Smith, John, his view of the relation 
 between a Holy Life and a Right 
 Belief, 432 
 on ecstasy and the Holy Life, 481 
 differs from Cudworth and More in 
 relying less on "Science" than on 
 "moral feeling" for proof of the 
 existence of God, 491, 492 
 distinguishes κίρησις ττροβατική and 
 KLvi]ats κυκλική, 496 
 Socrates, his " mesmeric " influence, 2 
 
 his Daemon, 2, 3 
 Somnium Scipionis probably owes its 
 astronomy to Posidonius, 439 
 astronomical eschatology of, 353 
 Sophists, the — their use of Allegories or 
 
 Illustrative Fables, 1 
 Soul, the Idea of, as represented in 
 
 Plato's Eschatological Myths, 60 ft". 
 Soul-stuff, in Timaeus, 304 f. 
 Souls, number of, fixed, 198, 199 
 Spanish Chapel, fresco referred to, 114 
 referred to to illustrate difference 
 between Myth and Allegory, 429 
 Spencer and Gillen on Souls of ancestors 
 
 entering into women, 199 
 Spenser, the human race created to make 
 good the loss of the fallen angels, 106 
 his allegory of Castle of Medina, 257 
 Spinoza, his view that religion is a matter 
 of piety rather than of dogmatic 
 truth, 59 
 on the Prophetic Temperament, 430, 
 431 
 Springs, hot and cold, origin of, in 
 
 Plmedo, 94 
 Stall baum, on the general characteristics 
 of the Politicus Myth, 196 
 on Protagoras Myth, 221 
 on Myth and Dialectic, 242 
 Stevenson, R. L., his Woodman quoted, 
 
 40 
 Stoics, the, their doctrine of σνγκατά• 
 θ€σι$, 63 
 their allegorisation of Homer, 233, 234 
 their doctrine of aerial habitat of 
 daemons and souls of the dead, 
 437 ff. 
 Story-telling, love of, importance of for 
 the development of man, 5 
 
INDEX 
 
 531 
 
 Story-telling, always "about people and 
 
 animals," 6 if. 
 Stories, distiuguislied as Simply Anthropo- 
 logical and Zoological, Aetiological, 
 and Eschatological, 8 flf. 
 Simply Anthropological and Zoological, 
 
 illustrated, 8 ff. 
 Aetiological, illustrated, 10-14 
 and magic, 10 
 various classes of, 10 
 Cosmological, a variety of the aetio- 
 logical story, 10-13 
 Sun, western rising of, in Atreus Myth, 
 197 
 rising where he now sets, and setting 
 where he now rises, in Egyptian 
 story, 197 
 Symbolism, "suppressed," illustrated from 
 Dante, 258 
 
 Tablets, attached to Souls by Judges of 
 the Dead, 130 
 gold, of Thurii and Petelia, 130, 156 ff. 
 Tablet, Petelia, quoted, 156 
 Tannery, on Orphic rites, 65 
 Tartarus, has entrance and exit separate 
 
 in Phaedo and Myth of Er, 112 
 Teleology, attitude of the religious con- 
 sciousness and the scientific under- 
 standing respectively to, 52 
 Plato's attitude to, 224 ff. 
 and Mechanism, 508 
 Teleological and mechanical explanations 
 of the World, distinction between, 
 set forth in Protagoras Myth, 222 fiF. 
 Theodore of Mopsuestia, his exegesis, 237 
 Thiasi, and personal, as distinguished 
 
 from official, religion, 71 
 Thiemann, on doctrine of Immorality of 
 the Soul as held by Plato, 60 
 on locality of Lethe, 154 
 Thomas the Rhymer, Ballad of, quoted 
 for rivers of blood in Elf-land, 103 
 referred to for the "Three Ways," 
 131 
 Thompson, regards the Phaedrits Myth 
 as a Rhetorical Paradigm, 336 
 regards the Phaedrus Myth as an 
 allegory, 336, 339 
 Three Ways, the, Ballad of Thomas the 
 Rhymer referred to for, 131 
 the three parts of Dante's D. C. corre- 
 spond to, 132 
 Tides of Atlantic Ocean, origin of, in 
 
 Phaedo, 94 
 Timaeus, the only work of Plato which 
 Dante knew directly, 102 
 reputation of, in antiquity and the 
 
 middle age, 210 ^ 
 
 one of a Trilogy, 259, 299 
 Toynbee, Dr., on Dante's acquaintance 
 with Claudian, 105 
 
 Toynbee, Dr., on Dante's acquaintance 
 
 with Pliny, 160 
 referred to for Dante's knowledge of 
 
 Macrobius, 361 
 on Dante's knowledge of the version of 
 
 the Timaeus made by Chalcidius, 
 
 468 
 Tozer, Mr., quoted for Dante's know- 
 ledge of Somnium Scipionis, 361 
 on Par. xxxi., 79 ff., 367 
 Transcendental Feeling, production and 
 
 regulation of, the end of Poetry, 
 
 22, 33 
 expressed by Dante, last Canto of Par., 
 
 and V. JSi., Sonnet xxv., 23, 38 
 Poets quoted to illustrate means em- 
 ployed for production of, 23-33 
 means employed by Poetry to produce 
 
 the dream-consciousness in which it 
 
 arises, 33 ff. 
 in a nascent form accounts for the 
 
 " magic " of certain kinds of Poetry, 36 
 explained genetically, 39 ff. 
 two phases of, 41 
 Imagination the Interpreter of, 42 
 its relation to Sense and Understanding, 
 
 42 
 Consciousness aware of " the Good " in, 
 
 44 ; cf. 59 
 the beginning and end of Metaphysics, 
 
 44 
 Consciousness comes nearest to the 
 
 object of Metaphysics, Ultimate 
 
 Reality, in, 44 
 "Transcendental," as distinguished from 
 
 *' Empirical " Feeling, 389 
 Tylor, Prof., on the state of the imagina- 
 tion among ancient and savage 
 
 peoples, 7 
 
 Universal, the, of Poetry, 384 ff. 
 
 "Vegetative Part of the Soul," funda- 
 mental, and source of that implicit 
 Faith in the Value of Life on which 
 Conduct and Science rest, 39 
 and " Universal of Poetry," 386 
 
 Vehicles, terrestrial, aerial, and aethereal, 
 H. More on, 96 
 aerial, of Souls in Purgatory, Dante on, 
 97 
 
 Vernon, on Lethe aud Eunoe, 155 
 
 Virgil, where does he localise the River 
 of Lethe ? 155 
 
 Visualisation, colour- and form-, power 
 of, possessed by Plato, Plutarch, and 
 Dante, 380, 381 
 
 Volcanic action, explained in Phuedo, 94 
 
 Volquardsen, his view of the δαιμόνων of 
 Socrates, 3 
 
 Votive figures and the βίων trapaSeiy' 
 ματα of the Myth of Er, 153 
 
532 
 
 THE I4YTHS OF PLATO 
 
 Wallace, W., on Kant's Ideas of Reason, 
 quoted, 46-7 
 
 Walt Whitman's Memories of President 
 Lincoln^ quoted for effect produced 
 similar to that produced by Plato's 
 Eschatological Myths, 31 if. 
 
 War, Plato's view of, 452, 453 
 
 Ward, Prof., his Naturalism and Agnos- 
 ticism referred to, 478 
 
 Weismann, Prof., referred to, 434 
 
 Westcott, Bishop, on Aeschylus' view of 
 the Condition of the Dead, 63 
 on influence of Plato's Myths through 
 
 later Platonic schools, 230 
 on Myth and Allegory, 243 
 
 Wilamowitz - Mollendorff, on Voyage of 
 Odysseus to Hades, as Orphic epi- 
 sode in Odyssey, QQ 
 
 Witchcraft. Cudworth's belief in, 100 
 Smith's belief in, 100 
 H. More's belief in, 100 
 
 Wordsworth, his lines beginning " There 
 
 was a boy " quoted to illustrate 
 nature of " poetic effect, " 35 
 Wordsworth, on relation of Poetry 
 Science, 342 
 on place of metre in Poetry, 390 
 
 Xenophanes, on the immorality of Hon 
 and Hesiod, 231 
 
 Yeats, Mr. W. B., referred to for the ic 
 of "poems spoken to a harp," 393 
 
 Zagreus Myth, 239 
 
 compared with that told by Aris• 
 
 phanes in Symposium, 409 ff. 
 Zeller, on the δαιμόρων of Socrates, 3 
 on doctrine of Immortality of the SO' 
 
 as held by Plato, 60, 70 
 on allegorisation of Homer by ti 
 
 Stoics, 233 
 on Neo-Platonic allegorisation, 242 
 on Pre-existence and άνάμνησίί, 343 ■. 
 
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