Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/211

PLATO 201 the Socratic manner, he proceeds to unfold the mystery once revealed to him by Diotitna, the Mantinean wise woman. Love is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither wise nor foolish, neither god nor mortal. Between gods and mortals is the world of mediating spirits (rb Scu/j.6vLov). And Love is a great spirit, child of Resource (the son of Prudence) and Poverty the beggar maid, who conceived him at the birthday feast of Aphrodite. He is far from living "delicately," but is ragged and shoeless, always in difficul ties, yet always brimming with invention, a mighty hunter after wisdom and all tilings fair ; sometimes " all full with feasting " on them, the next moment " clean starved " for lack ; never absolutely knowing nor quite ignorant. That is to say, he is a "philosopher." For knowledge is the most beautiful thing, and love is of the beautiful. But what does love desire of the beautiful ? The possession is enough. But there is one kind of love called " being in love " which desires beauty for a peculiar end. The lover is seeking, not his " other half," but possession of the beautiful and birth in beauty. For there is a season of puberty both in body and mind, when human nature longs to create, and it cannot save in presence of beauty. This yearning is the earnest of immortality. Even in the bird s devotion to its mate and to its young there is a craving after continued being. In individual lives there is a flux, not only of the body, but in the mind. Nay, the sciences themselves also come and go (here the contrast to the Ph&do is at its height). But in mortal things the shadow of continuity is succession. The love of fame is a somewhat brighter image of immortality than the love of offspring. Creative souls would bring into being not children of their body, but good deeds. And such a one is readiest to fall in love with a fair mind in a fair body, and then is filled with enthusiasm and begets noble thoughts. Homer, Hesiod, Lycurgus, Solon, were such genial minds. But they stopped at the threshold (comp. Prot., Mono], and saw not the higher mysteries, which are reserved for those who rise from noble actions, institu tions, laws, to universal beauty. The true order is to advance from one to all fair forms, then to fair practices, fair thoughts, and lastly to the single thought of absolute beauty. In that com munion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, one shall bring forth realities and become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Alcibiades here breaks in and is vociferously welcomed. He is crowning Agathon, when, on perceiving Socrates, he declares that he will crown him too. Then he announces himself king of the feast, and insists upon hard drinking (though this will make no difference to Socrates). Eryximachus demands from the newcomer a speech in praise of love. But Alcibiades will praise no one else when Socrates is by his voice he charms more powerfully than they do by their pipings. The eloquence of Pericles has no effect in comparison with his. His words alone move Alcibiades to shame, and fascinate him until he stops his ears and runs from him." "I often wish him dead. Yet that would break my heart. He brings me to my wit s end." "And, as carved Sileni are made to encase images of gods, so this Silenus-mask cntreasures things divine. He affects ignorance and susceptibility to beauty. Thus he mocks mankind. But he cares nothing for outward shows, and his tem perance (<Ttii(t>poffvvT]) is wonderful." To prove this Alcibiades reveals his own heart-secret. (He is not ashamed to speak it amongst others who have felt the pang which Socrates inflicts. ) And he makes it abundantly manifest that in their widely-rumoured intercourse (comp. Protag. init. ) Socrates had never_ cared for anything but what was best for his younger friend. Alcibiades then relates as an eyewitness the endurance shown by Socrates at Potidsea, his strange persistence in solitary meditation, standing absorbed in thought for a day and a night together, and his intrepid conduct in the retreat from Delium (comp. Laches). " The talk of Socrates is of pack-asses and cobblers, and he is ever saying the same things in the same words ; but one who lifts the mask and looks within will find that no other words have mean ing. " Alcibiades ends by warning his companions against the wiles of Socrates. Some raillery follows, and they are invaded by another band of revellers, who compel them to drink still more deeply. The soberly inclined (led by Eryximachus) slink off, and Aristodemus, the reporter of the scene, only remembers further that when he awoke at cock-crow Socrates was still conversing with Agathon and Aristophanes, and showing them that tragedy and comedy were essentially one. He talked them both asleep, and at daybreak went about his usual business. The philosopher of the Symposium is in the world and yet not of it, apparently yielding but really overcoming. In the Phsedo the soul was exhorted to "live upon her servant s loss," as in Shakspeare s most religious sonnet ; this dialogue tells of a " soul within sense " in the spirit of some more recent poetry. By force of imagination rather than of reason, the reconciliation of becoming (yevecrts) with being (ovcria), of the temporal with the eternal, is anticipated. But through the bright haze of fancy and behind the mask of irony, Socrates still appears the same strong, pure, upright, and beneficent human being as in the Apoloyy, Crito, and Phaedo. The impassioned contemplation of the beautiful is again Phaadrus imagined as the beginning of philosophy. But the " limitless ocean of beauty " is replaced by a world of supramundane forms, beheld by unembodied souls, and remembered here on earth through enthusiasm, proceeding by dialectic from multiform impressions to one rational con ception, and distinguishing the " lines and veins " of truth. The Phsedrus records Plato s highest "hour of insight," when he willed the various tasks hereafter to be fulfilled. In it he soars to a pitch of contemplation from whence he takes a comprehensive and keen-eyed survey of the country to be explored, marking off the blind alleys and paths that lead astray, laying down the main lines and chief branches, and taking note of the erroneous wanderings of others. Reversing the vulgar adage, he flies that he may creep. The transcendent aspiration of the Phazdo and the mystic glow of the Symposium are here combined with the notion of a scientific process. No longer asking, as in the Prota goras, Is virtue one or many ? Plato rises to the conception of a scientific one and many, to be contemplated through dialectic, no barren abstraction, but a method of classifi cation according to nature. This method is to be applied especially to psychology, not merely with a speculative, but also with a practical aim. For the " birth in beauty " of the Symposium is here developed into an art of education, of which the true rhetoric is but the means, and true statesmanship an accidental outcome. Like all imaginative critics, Plato falls to some extent under the influence of that which he criticizes. The art of rhetoric which he so often travestied had a lasting effect upon his style. Readers of his latest works are often reminded of the mock grandiloquence of the PJi&drus. But in this dialogue the poetical side of his genius is at the height. Not only can he express or imitate anything, and produce any effect at will, but he is standing behind his creation and disposing it with the most perfect mastery, preserving unity amidst profuse variety, and giving har mony to a wildness bordering on the grotesque. The person of Socrates is here deliberately modified. He no longer (as in the Symposium} teaches positive wisdom under the pretence of repeating what he has heard, but is himself caught by an exceptional inspiration, which is accounted for by the unusual circumstance of his finding himself in the country and alone with Phaedrus. He has been hitherto a stranger to the woods and fields, which would tempt him away from studying himself through intercourse with men. But by the promise of discourse especially of talk with Phajdrus he may be drawn anywhither. Phsedrus has been charmed by a discourse of Lysias, which after some coy excuses he consents to read. It is a frigid erotic diatribe, in which one not in love pleads for preference over the lover. Socrates hints at criticism, and is chal lenged to produce something better on the same theme. 1. Distinguishing desire from true opinion, he defines love as desire prevailing against truth, and then expatiates on the harmful tendencies of love as so defined. But he becomes alarmed at his own unwonted eloquence, and is about to remove, when the "divine token " warns him that he must first recite a " palinode " in praise of love. For no divine power can be the cause of evil. 2. Love is madness ; but there is a noble madness, as is shown by soothsayers (called uavrfis from fj.atvofj.ai). And of the higher madness there are four kinds.

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