him any farther displeasure he would make another partition, and divide
every human being, already so imperfect, into two. After some time, I
know not upon what provocation, he determined to execute this threat,
and with the same skill as before effected a still more lamentable
division, the whole human race falling asunder at the same instant.
Every man found himself, he knew not why, suddenly standing on one foot.
The two halves of a man gazed at each other in amazement; and each
asked the other its opinion of what had happened, and of what was to
follow. Each body was divided into two even shares; the nose being split
exactly in the middle, and the same justice observed from head to foot.
At the moment of division a new skin had grown over the parts newly
exposed, so as to prevent the loss of a single drop of blood. One of
these half men, therefore, putting his hand to that side of his face
which had undergone the change, felt a plain flat surface. The voice,
though from half a tongue, was as distinct but not so strong as before.
A man had no difficulty in supporting himself, or in hopping along on
his single foot; for though in the present condition of man it is a
severe labour for one foot to discharge the duty of both, and convey the
whole body, yet half the burden being taken away the remaining foot
could make some progress without any violent exertion. Some practice,
however, was required to move with sufficient speed and security; and
the right side, by its superior vigour, was the first to attain a
proficiency in hopping. As soon as the first consternation was over,
men, supposing that their new condition was to continue, endeavoured to
reconcile themselves to the being half what they had been, and to supply
the loss of limbs by the exercise of what remained. Many disputes and
confusions were caused by this event. A man being about to be married to
a beautiful girl before the division took place, and one side of him in
its first attempt to hop down stairs having broken its neck, the other
side found itself provided with two wives by the separation of the
intended bride; and as the two halves of her were equally beautiful and
loved him with equal fidelity, he knew not which to choose. There was
another case not less difficult to decide. A man had been betrothed to a
woman of great beauty, but her left cheek was unfortunately disfigured
by a scar. The two sides, therefore, being now of different value, the
right side of the man claimed the perfect half, maintaining that each
ought to take the part corresponding with himself; but this opinion was
disputed by the left side of the man, who positively refused to accept
of the blemished half.
In many cases great injustice was done by this division to one half of
the human being. The brain being separated in the middle, the qualities
of the mind were divided. In some instances they had been equally
distributed through the head, so that each side contained a just share;
but in other cases they had been differently arranged, and one half
possessed all the valuable endowments. In some heads the virtues had
been all on one side, and the vices collected on the other; so that one
half was a man of perfect character, while the other abandoned itself to
every sort of depravity. It appeared that some men, who had been
distinguished by wit in conversation, had been witty only on one side of
the head, and that side remained as agreeable as before, while the other
became extremely dull. In a public assembly, soon after this occurrence,
the right side of an orator began to speak, and proceeded for some time
with great volubility, but suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence,
and appeared at the end of its oratory, upon which the left side
finished the sentence, and then continued the harangue to its
conclusion. It seemed, therefore, that this oration had occupied the
whole head, in which it lay ready for use, and had been cut into two
equal parts, the left side of the orator being ignorant of the beginning
and the right side of the end.
Jupiter soon discovered that by this second separation he had too much
disabled the human race, for men sunk into such misery and dejection
that all the duties and enterprises of life would have been speedily
forgotten had they remained so decrepit. He therefore ordered Apollo to
unite men again, and make them such as they now are, and as they were
before the last division. This was done, but not so skilfully as to
prevent all bad consequences from the separation. The injury done to us
is still apparent; for although on the outside we bear not the least
mark of this cruel operation, yet in the minds and characters of men it
is easy to find evidence of their having been cleft into two. The truth
is, that Apollo thought only of preventing any external injury, and was
not careful enough in adjusting the several parts of the brain to each
other. In most cases, therefore, the fibres were not accurately united,
and in consequence the generality of men may be said to have two minds;
one set of passions and opinions on the right side and another on the
left. Sometimes one side gains the direction of the man and sometimes
the other, and hence arise the contradictory qualities and variations of
character in the same person. A man, whose habitual prudence we have
long known, surprises us by a sudden rashness; in this case one side of
his head only has been stored with prudence, and that has commonly been
the governing side, but upon this one occasion the other half has
prevailed over it. In the first ages, when man and woman composed one
creature, two bodies were governed by a single mind; but now, to our
misfortune, one body is subject to the control of two minds, each of
which having its own separate passions, and endeavouring to gratify
them, there is a perpetual contest between them for the government of
the body. Any man who considers what passes within himself, will
perceive that he thinks and acts more like two men than one. He finds in
himself infirmities which he despises; this is the contempt which one
side of him entertains for the other side. He is conscious of two
dispositions,--the one wise, moderate, and circumspect, the other
intemperate and rash; and he cannot determine which of these is
himself, for all the passions seem equally his own. Thus I explain the
difficulty proposed by Alcibiades, and I am now ready to hear
Cleocrates.
CLEOCRATES.
I learned many things from an Egyptian priest, and amongst other strange
doctrines he told me that I had passed many lives upon the earth before
that which I enjoy now. Perceiving that I regarded this as a fable
intended for amusement rather than belief, he told me that he would soon
convince me of the truth of what he taught by restoring to my memory a
part of the past. He then mixed together many ingredients, of which I
knew not the nature, and making a draught of them desired me to swallow
it. I complied, and soon fell into a deep sleep, from which, when I
awoke, I found myself wonderfully altered, for I clearly remembered a
former life, the chief adventures of which were as distinct to me as the
occurrences of my present existence; and besides this I remembered my
death, and the treatment which I met with in another world. I shall not
relate to you any events of my former life, but confine myself to an
account of what I observed as a dead person, because it is that which
explains the subject of our present conversation.
As soon as I was dead, then, I found myself in a throng of spectres,
approaching the place of judgment, which is conducted in a very
different manner from what is usually imagined. When I arrived at the
fearful spot, I found that the actions of all those to be tried had been
collected together, the deeds of each man forming a separate heap. The
judge held in his hands a large sieve, which he presented to the first
spectre who came to trial. He then took up a part of this man's actions,
and placing them in the sieve commanded him to shake them; the sieve
having a peculiar sagacity, by which it lets the meritorious actions
pass through, and retains the bad. This spectre had been a pirate, and
the sieve was filled with cruelty, rapine, and murder. He shook
vigorously, but only one of his actions dropped through; it was the
release of a prisoner without ransom, probably at the beginning of his
career, and from want of experience. When he had shaken the crimes
ineffectually for some time, the judge commanded him to empty the sieve
by inverting it, and then placed in it another handful of his life. This
he agitated with great resolution, but the sieve refused to part with a
single crime. He succeeded no better with the remainder of his exploits;
and when all had been shaken sufficiently to try their worth, they were
thrown into a heap, from which the judge deducted one crime as an
equivalent for the single good action which had passed the sieve, and
then ordered the criminal to lie down and roll himself in his sins. As
he rolled every crime adhered to him, and he rose from the ground
covered with his own enormities. A fury then approached, and touched him
with a lighted torch, by which every crime was instantly converted into
a flame. He uttered a loud yell; and another fury, armed with a whip,
drove him from the place of judgment, blazing violently as he went
along. All the spectres had to undergo the same judgment in turn; the
actions of each were submitted to the sieve, and for every deed which by
passing through could prove itself a laudable act one of the bad actions
was removed; the remaining errors were fixed to the guilty spectre as I
have described, and set on fire, when each of them burned with violence
and pain according to its enormity.
Whether it was Minos who presided at this ceremony I could not learn;
but it seemed to me that the office required no great sagacity or
justice, for the sieve was really the judge, and I greatly admired the
equity with which it detained or dismissed the actions submitted to it.
I heard it said that this sieve was Minos himself, who had been
transformed into that instrument at his death for the duty I am
relating.
I saw the trial of a well known orator, who took the sieve with great
confidence as a benefactor to his country. His harangues were placed in
it, and a few of them passed through, as having enjoined what was
useful; but the chief part, notwithstanding their eloquence, could
obtain no passage, and some of them, as soon as they were kindled,
seemed to give him great torment. I also saw three celebrated poets
receive judgment. They were Anacreon, Archilochus, and Sappho. Their
poems lay in the heap amongst the other actions of their lives, and were
subjected to the consideration of the sieve. Those strains which had
caused virtue immediately fell through, and the lays that had encouraged
vice were detained to become firebrands. Many were the dissolute odes
which Anacreon shook without success, though he tried every part of the
sieve, as if he had imagined that some of its holes would be more
indulgent than others. His debaucheries, too, were obstructed in the
same manner as his poetry; and as he had lived to a great age, and
continued his poetry and his enjoyments to the last, he made a large
conflagration. Sappho having lived and written as voluptuously as
Anacreon, was as unsuccessful in her agitation of the sieve.
Archilochus, also, had many licentious poems to burn him; and many
others were stopped in the sieve on account of their malevolent and
unjust satire.
I shall not enumerate all the trials that I saw before I came to
judgment myself. I was fully satisfied of the justice of all that I had
seen, and was therefore in great terror, for I believed many of my
actions to be quite disqualified for passing so rigorous a sieve. And so
they proved; for though I shook them with great vigour, a considerable
heap remained after the deduction of faults equal in number to the good
actions. With great reluctance and horror of mind I rolled myself in
them as I was commanded, and rose covered with my crimes, which burst
into a blaze as soon as the torch was applied. The pain was dreadful,
and I wonder that by any means I could have been made to forget it. The
conducting fury drove me away to a large plain, where all the criminals
were collected. There was here no light except from the flame of our own
crimes, and we all wandered about in restless agony. Some rolled upon
the ground in hope of extinguishing their fires, but not a crime could
be smothered till it had been burned out in the manner ordained. The
whole place was filled with screams and lamentations.
After some years of these dreary pains our fires evidently began to
abate. At the end of twenty years three of my errors had gone out, and
others were burning faintly. When fifty years had passed the flames had
disappeared from all of us.
As soon as we were extinguished, several furies appeared with whips, and
drove us to a distant part of hell, where we had to make choice of
bodies in which to pass another life in the world. But first we
underwent a singular examination. The plain where we had been burning
was surrounded by a wall, and in leaving it we all passed through a
gate, at which sat a minister of the place, whose name I know not. He
seized every spectre that passed, and closely examined him; some he
dismissed, but upon others he performed a strange operation. For when he
had found one that required this remedy, he fixed his nails into the
head, and tore him downwards into two parts, as a man may tear a piece
of cloth. Every spectre so divided uttered a loud scream as if the
separation were very painful. It was remarkable, that each part was
still an entire spectre, and appeared as large as when the two were
united. The operator then examined the two halves, and sometimes tore
them again, each still retaining its size. Thus, in some instances, he
made six or seven spectres out of one. The reason of this I afterwards
discovered, and must explain to you. When this ceremony is ended, the
spectres are turned into an enclosed place, where they find a crowd of
bodies, being those which they had inhabited upon earth. Each has
liberty to enter either his own body or any other that he can seize, a
great strife, therefore, takes place; and in the contest for bodies it
frequently happens that two or more souls obtain a lodgement in the
same. These souls are compressed together, and pass through life as one
person. This, therefore, is the cause why so many contradictory thoughts
and inclinations are often found in the same man, for the two or more
souls can never be united so as to make a single mind, but each
preserves its own nature; and thus they are always contending together,
sometimes one gaining the ascendant and sometimes another. When a man
dies they go out of him as one spectre, having been pressed into each
other by the body, so that they cannot separate themselves by their own
efforts. They are then punished together, since their crimes have been
committed in concert; but as they leave the place of punishment they are
torn asunder as I have related. The executioner who divides them knows
by examination whether each spectre consists of one soul or more, and
never suffers a double one to pass. I was scrutinised with the rest, and
being found single escaped the laceration of which I was much in dread.
I observed that when a soul had been divided, each single part was very
different in appearance and character from the compound soul before
separation. Thus Sappho, after being examined, was torn into two parts,
when one half of her appeared a soul of elevated and solemn genius, the
other half had in a previous existence been a woman of lascivious and
disorderly life, who having obtained entrance into the body chosen by
the woman of genius had filled her disposition and her poetry with vice.
As soon as they were separate, the sublime Sappho began with great
indignation to reproach her late associate with the disgraceful
pleasures in which she had involved her. The other was not at all
disconcerted, but received the censure with a laugh.
I heard many other souls, after separation, inveighing against their
confederates, and declaring what great things they could have done had
they been single. Some of the souls thus reproved denied their guilt,
and affirmed that they had first been misled by the accuser, so that
there were many disputes amongst the cloven spectres. We were now turned
into the place where the bodies we had last lived in awaited us, and
amongst these we had each to choose a habitation for another life. The
bodies here presented a very singular spectacle, having no minds to
animate them, but standing upright without motion, and without thought
or life in the countenance. Some strange adventures now ensued amongst
the souls, in haste to take possession of the bodies that pleased them.
A soul enters the body by opening the mouth and crawling in, being able
by a little effort and struggling to compress itself so as to be
admitted. On every side, therefore, bodies were seen in the act of
swallowing their souls; and it frequently happened, that when a soul had
only his legs projecting from the mouth another seized him by the feet,
and dragged him back again, having a desire for the same body.
I immediately saw the frame which I had last inhabited, but had no wish
to return into it, for it had neither strength nor beauty. Why I had
chosen it before I know not, for the draught of the Egyptian had not
restored things so remote to my memory. I resolved, therefore, to
provide myself with a better figure, and wandered about in search of a
body to my taste.
I found that when a spectre had taken possession of a body, he was not
immediately united with it so as to form one being, nor could he command
it, as we living men rule our bodies; he was at first a separate
creature from the body, though not at liberty to leave it when once
settled within. The uniting of mind and body takes place afterwards.
Many souls were extremely desirous of being the only occupiers of a
body, which gave rise to innumerable contests; for when a spectre of
this solitary temper had established himself in a body that he liked, he
vigorously defended it against all assailants. In many places a soul was
seen on the outside of a body eagerly endeavouring to force open the
mouth, which another soul within was striving to keep shut. Sometimes
the possessor remonstrated loudly against the invasion, and insisted on
his right to live alone. Other souls formed willing confederacies, and
chose a body by agreement, in which they might live together. Sometimes
he who was conscious of a deficiency in any particular quality
associated himself with one who had it in an eminent degree. I saw five
or six merry spectres, who purposely formed themselves into a
composition of the most incongruous characters, and seemed to be much
diverted with the expectation of being a very singular man. I remarked,
that the souls which had been united in a former existence always took
care not to become confederates again. Any spectre might enter either a
male or female body, and several therefore took the opportunity of
changing their sex. But in this case the former disposition still
continues, which explains the effeminate nature of some men, and the
masculine temper of certain women. In some instances a man and a woman
settled themselves in the same body, and it is easy to discover the
mixed characters which result from such a composition.
I saw a male and a female spectre, who in their last existence had been
husband and wife, and still retained their love for each other. Thinking
it probable that if they took different bodies they should be separated
for ever, they agreed to become associates in the same. They hesitated
at first whether to be a man or a woman, but decided in favour of the
male sex; and having found an empty body they crawled into it, but a
mischievous spectre, observing this union, crept in after them, not
being discovered until he was quite established and immovable. When the
husband perceived how his privacy was interrupted, he loudly reproached
the intruder, who laughed heartily at finding himself so troublesome.
I shall now, Socrates, relate what I saw take place in the composition
of you. I observed a thoughtful spectre wandering about, and appearing
in no haste to enter a body. Another soul, which was that of a poet,
proposed to him that they should become associates, saying, that the
reasoning power of one and the poetical fancy of the other could not
fail by combination to produce a splendid genius. The other spectre
declined this offer, saying, that he was conscious of a superior
intellect, which in his last existence had been rendered quite useless
by a bad confederate, and he was therefore determined to be alone. He
added, that he cared not what kind of body he should live in, provided
he was the sole master of it. This was overheard by another spectre, who
in his former life had been a public buffoon, and supported himself by
wandering through Greece, telling fables to the crowd, and exhibiting
the accomplishments of a monkey. He had been renowned for his satirical
humour, and his success in putting some of his hearers out of
countenance. This buffoon hearing the words of the philosophical
spectre, said to him, "If you wish to have no companion, I advise you to
enter the body now before you, for you cannot possibly have any
competitors for such a dwelling." The body he recommended was that,
Socrates, which you now walk about in; and as I have often heard you
ridicule the shape of it, I need not fear to offend you by telling how
it came to be your covering. The solemn spectre having considered this
body, said, "I really think your advice is good, for I certainly shall
not be disturbed by invaders as long as there is another body to be
found; besides which, a philosopher has many advantages in being ugly."
After a little consideration he opened the mouth, and crawled in, when
the buffoon, not able to refuse the opportunity of a jest, crept after
him, and had irrevocably entered the body before the philosopher
perceived his unwelcome colleague. He then inveighed bitterly against
the intruder, and lamented that a second time his intellect would be
useless from the levity associated with it. The buffoon contradicted
this, and affirmed that his vivacity would much assist the philosopher
in his design of instructing the world. Thus, Socrates, were you
compounded; and since to the buffoon we owe the satire and irony by
which we grow wiser, I think we may rejoice that the philosophical half
of you was so cheated.
After this I saw a very beautiful male form disputed by a crowd of
spectres. The body was that of Alcibiades, and when I tell him how many
opposite characters were finally lodged in it, he will cease to wonder
at the variety of inclinations, which he finds within himself. It had
first been taken possession of by the spectre of a philosopher, who
thought that so noble a figure would give eloquence to his doctrines;
and when I first saw it, this philosopher within was guarding the mouth
against a multitude of assailants, all eager to inhabit the most
beautiful of bodies. I heard him arguing against the justice of the
attack, in a smothered voice from within the body, and endeavouring to
prove his own sole title. But in spite of his reasoning, the mouth was
forced open, and a whole crowd rushed in. The first to enter was the
spectre of a debauched reveller, who was followed by an orator, a
musician, a pirate, a soldier, a poet, and two courtesans, besides some
other spectres, of whose genius and vocation I was ignorant. More wished
to enter; but those within, thinking they had a sufficient diversity of
character for one man, combined together to close the mouth against all
future assailants. Since, therefore, Alcibiades, you find that in your
person so many people must agree to act together, you cannot wonder that
there is a frequent conflict, and that the philosopher has some
difficulty in ruling his associates.
* * * * *
TRUTH RELEASED.
_Translated from a Greek manuscript lately discovered._
A LETTER FROM THRASICLES OF MILETUS TO RHODIUS OF ATHENS.