Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/212

Rh 202 PLATO To explain this it is necessary to understand psychology. The soul is self-existent and self-moving, and therefore eternal. And her form is like a pair of winged steeds with their charioteer. In divine souls both steeds are good, but in human souls one of them is bad. Xov before entering the body the soul lost her wings, which in her unembodied state were nourished by beauty, wisdom, goodness, and all that is divine. For at the festival of souls, in which they visit the heaven that is above the heavens, the unruly steed caused the charioteer to see imperfectly. So the soul cast her feathers and fell down and passed into the human form. And, according to the comparative clearness or dimness of that first vision, her earthly lot is varied from that of a philosopher or artist down through nine grades (including woman-) to that of a tyrant. On her conduct in this state of probation depends her condition when again born into the world. And only in ten thousand years can she return to her pristine state, except through a life of philosophy (comp. Phasdo) or of pure and noble love (comp. Symposium). The mind of the philosopher alone has wings. He is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries, and his soul alone becomes complete. But the vulgar deem him mad and rebuke him ; they do not see that he is inspired. This divine madness (the fourth kind of those above mentioned) is kindled through the renewed vision of beauty. For wisdom is not seen ; her loveliness would have been transporting if she had a visible form. The struggle of the higher passion with the lower is then described with extraordinary vividness, under the image of the two steeds. When the higher impulse triumphs, the issue is a philosophic friendship, at once passionate and absolutely pure. 3. From his &quot; palinode &quot; Socrates returns to Lysias, who is advised to leave speech-writing for philosophy. n. Phsedrus remarks that the speech-writer is despised by the politician. Socrates replies that speech-writing and politics are one concern. The real difference is between those who base their teaching on philosophy and those who are content with rules of art. For example, if the first speech of Socrates is compared with that of Lysias, the one is found to distinguish and define, the other not ; the one observes order in discourse, the other &quot; begins where he should end,&quot; and his utterance is like a disordered chain. A speech should be an organic whole, a &quot; creature having hands and feet.&quot; So in the &quot;palinode &quot; there was a classification of the kinds of madness, which led the way to &quot; a possibly true though partly erring myth.&quot; This approximation to truth in the midst of much that was playful was due to the observance of two principles, generalization and division (awayuyii, Stalpfffis). Whoever sees the one and many in nature, him Socrates follows and walks in his footsteps, as if he were a god. In comparison of dialectic, as thus conceived, the frigid rules of Lysias, Thrasymachus, Theodoras, Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, Polus, and Protagoras are futile and absurd. l&amp;gt;. Another condition of teaching (or true rhetoric) is the science of mind. Whether the soul be one or many, complex or multiform, and if multiform what are its parts and kinds, are questions which the teacher must have already solved. And he must likewise have classified all arguments and know them in their various applica bility to divers souls. An art of speaking that should fulfil this condition is non-existent. Yet how can even verisimilitude be attained without knowledge of truth ? c. The art of writing is kindred to the art of speech. But Socrates maintains that oral teaching through the living contact of mind with mind has many advantages over written composition, which is, comparatively speaking, a dead thing. Men may write for amusement or to record the intercourse that has been. But the serious occupation of the true thinker and teacher is the com munication of truth through vital converse with others like- minded, the creation of &quot;thoughts that breathe&quot; in spirits conscious of their value. In conclusion, a friendly hint is given to Isocnites that he may do better than Lysias if he will but turn his attention to philosophy. The Ph&drus anticipates much, that Plato afterwards slowly elaborated, and retains some things which he at last eliminated. (1) The presence of movement or impulse in the highest region is an aspect of truth which reappears in the tiophistes and other later dialogues. It has been thought strange that it should be found so early as in the Phsidrus. But does not this remark imply an unwarrant able assumption, viz., that Plato s idealism took its depar ture from the being of Parmenides 1 Is it not rather the fact that his own theory was formulated before the Megarian ascendency led him to examine the Eleatic doctrine, and that it was by a tendency from the first inherent in Platonism that that doctrine was modified in his final teaching? (2) The outlines of method which are thrown out at white heat in the Phxdrus are a preparation for the more sober treatment of the ideas in the dialectical dialogues. In these, however, the con ception of classification is somewhat altered through contact with Eleaticism. (3) The Phxdrus aims, not merely at realizing universals, but at grasping them in and through particulars. This is an ideal of knowledge which was &quot; lost as soon as seen,&quot; but one which in some of his latest dialogues, such as the Politicus and Philelus, Plato again endeavours to work out. (4) The Phxdrus contains the elements of that true psychology into which the ontologi- cal theory of the ideas is gradually transmuted in Plato s more advanced writings, when the difficulties of his ideal doctrine in its cruder forms have been clearly felt and understood. (5) Plato here appears as a professor of education, preferring oral intercourse to authorship. In this paradox he at once exalts the work of Socrates and avows his own vocation as a teacher. The passage throws an interesting light upon the form of dialogue in which his works are cast. But it is not to be supposed that he remained long unconscious of the influence he was destined to wield by writing. In undertaking a great task like the JRejmblic, he practically receded from the untenable view asserted here ; and in the Laics he recommends his longest and most prosaic work as a suitable basis for the education of the future. (6) It must always appear strange, even to those most familiar with the conditions of Hellenic life, that in portraying the idealizing power of passionate love Plato should have taken his departure from unnatural feeling. On this subject he has sung his own &quot; palinode &quot; in the Laivs, which he intended as his final legacy to mankind. 1 Not that he ceased to exalt genius and originality above mere talent, or to demand for philosophy the service of the heart as well as the head, nor yet that friendship was less valued by him in later years. All this remained unchanged. And in the Republic the passion of love is still distantly referred to as the symbol of ideal aspiration. But a time came when he had learned to frown on the aberration of feeling Avhich in the Symposium and Pkxdrus he appears to regard as the legitimate stimulus of intellectual enthu siasm. And already in the Thesetetus not love but wonder is described as the only beginning of philosophy. While calling attention to this change of sentiment, it is right to add that Platonic love in the &quot; erotic &quot; dialogues of Plato is very different from what has often been so named, and that nothing even in the noble passage of the Laivs above referred to casts the slightest shadow of blame on the Socrates of the Symposium. Such changes are, amongst other things, a ground for caution in comparing the two steeds of the Phxdrus with the spirit ((9v/xds) and desire (eVifliyu a) of the Republic and Timetus. The Phxdrus, in common with these dialogues, asserts the existence of higher and lower impulses in human nature, but there is no sufficient ground for suppos ing that when Plato wrote the Phxdms he would have defined them precisely as they are defined in the Republic, The Cratylus is full of curious interest as marking the Cratyli. highest point reached by the &quot; science of language &quot; in antiquity ; but, as this dialogue &quot; hardly derives any light from Plato s other writings,&quot; 2 so neither does it reflect much light on them. It deals slightly with the contrast between Heracliteanism and Eleaticism, the importance of dialectic, the difficulty about the existence of falsehood, and ends with a brief allusion to the doctrine of ideas, but these topics are all more fully discussed elsewhere. 1 Laws, viii. 836. 2 Professor Jowett, who has, notwithstanding, thrown much light n the Crotylus in his brilliant introduction.