The myths of Plato are a phenomenon unique in literature. There are
four longer ones: these occur in the Phaedrus, Phaedo, Gorgias, and
Republic. That in the Republic is the most elaborate and finished of
them. Three of these greater myths, namely those contained in the
Phaedo, the Gorgias and the Republic, relate to the destiny of human
souls in a future life. The magnificent myth in the Phaedrus treats of
the immortality, or rather the eternity of the soul, in which is
included a former as well as a future state of existence. To these may
be added, (1) the myth, or rather fable, occurring in the Statesman, in
which the life of innocence is contrasted with the ordinary life of man
and the consciousness of evil: (2) the legend of the Island of
Atlantis, an imaginary history, which is a fragment only, commenced in
the Timaeus and continued in the Critias: (3) the much less artistic
fiction of the foundation of the Cretan colony which is introduced in
the preface to the Laws, but soon falls into the background: (4) the
beautiful but rather artificial tale of Prometheus and Epimetheus
narrated in his rhetorical manner by Protagoras in the dialogue called
after him: (5) the speech at the beginning of the Phaedrus, which is a
parody of the orator Lysias; the rival speech of Socrates and the
recantation of it. To these may be added (6) the tale of the
grasshoppers, and (7) the tale of Thamus and of Theuth, both in the
Phaedrus: (8) the parable of the Cave (Republic), in which the previous
argument is recapitulated, and the nature and degrees of knowledge
having been previously set forth in the abstract are represented in a
picture: (9) the fiction of the earth-born men (Republic; compare
Laws), in which by the adaptation of an old tradition Plato makes a new
beginning for his society: (10) the myth of Aristophanes respecting the
division of the sexes, Sym.: (11) the parable of the noble captain, the
pilot, and the mutinous sailors (Republic), in which is represented the
relation of the better part of the world, and of the philosopher, to
the mob of politicians: (12) the ironical tale of the pilot who plies
between Athens and Aegina charging only a small payment for saving men
from death, the reason being that he is uncertain whether to live or
die is better for them (Gor.): (13) the treatment of freemen and
citizens by physicians and of slaves by their apprentices,—a somewhat
laboured figure of speech intended to illustrate the two different ways
in which the laws speak to men (Laws). There also occur in Plato
continuous images; some of them extend over several pages, appearing
and reappearing at intervals: such as the bees stinging and stingless
(paupers and thieves) in the Eighth Book of the Republic, who are
generated in the transition from timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which
is to the visible world what the idea of good is to the intellectual,
in the Sixth Book of the Republic: the composite animal, having the
form of a man, but containing under a human skin a lion and a
many-headed monster (Republic): the great beast, i.e. the populace: and
the wild beast within us, meaning the passions which are always liable
to break out: the animated comparisons of the degradation of philosophy
by the arts to the dishonoured maiden, and of the tyrant to the
parricide, who “beats his father, having first taken away his arms”:
the dog, who is your only philosopher: the grotesque and rather paltry
image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws), which is
repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias: the argument personified as
veiling her face (Republic), as engaged in a chase, as breaking upon us
in a first, second and third wave:—on these figures of speech the
changes are rung many times over. It is observable that nearly all
these parables or continuous images are found in the Republic; that
which occurs in the Theaetetus, of the midwifery of Socrates, is
perhaps the only exception. To make the list complete, the mathematical
figure of the number of the state (Republic), or the numerical interval
which separates king from tyrant, should not be forgotten.
The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of another life
which, like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences
of the mysteries. It is a vision of the rewards and punishments which
await good and bad men after death. It supposes the body to continue
and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes a
Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo
and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only. The
argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the meaning
breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and consistency
of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the chief
point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is no
possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of
foreseeing death, and brings together the souls both of them and their
judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both are exposed to
view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might prevent them from
seeing into or being seen by one another.
The myth of the Phaedo is of the same type, but it is more
cosmological, and also more poetical. The beautiful and ingenious fancy
occurs to Plato that the upper atmosphere is an earth and heaven in
one, a glorified earth, fairer and purer than that in which we dwell.
As the fishes live in the ocean, mankind are living in a lower sphere,
out of which they put their heads for a moment or two and behold a
world beyond. The earth which we inhabit is a sediment of the coarser
particles which drop from the world above, and is to that heavenly
earth what the desert and the shores of the ocean are to us. A part of
the myth consists of description of the interior of the earth, which
gives the opportunity of introducing several mythological names and of
providing places of torment for the wicked. There is no clear
distinction of soul and body; the spirits beneath the earth are spoken
of as souls only, yet they retain a sort of shadowy form when they cry
for mercy on the shores of the lake; and the philosopher alone is said
to have got rid of the body. All the three myths in Plato which relate
to the world below have a place for repentant sinners, as well as other
homes or places for the very good and very bad. It is a natural
reflection which is made by Plato elsewhere, that the two extremes of
human character are rarely met with, and that the generality of mankind
are between them. Hence a place must be found for them. In the myth of
the Phaedo they are carried down the river Acheron to the Acherusian
lake, where they dwell, and are purified of their evil deeds, and
receive the rewards of their good. There are also incurable sinners,
who are cast into Tartarus, there to remain as the penalty of atrocious
crimes; these suffer everlastingly. And there is another class of
hardly-curable sinners who are allowed from time to time to approach
the shores of the Acherusian lake, where they cry to their victims for
mercy; which if they obtain they come out into the lake and cease from
their torments.
Neither this, nor any of the three greater myths of Plato, nor perhaps
any allegory or parable relating to the unseen world, is consistent
with itself. The language of philosophy mingles with that of mythology;
abstract ideas are transformed into persons, figures of speech into
realities. These myths may be compared with the Pilgrim’s Progress of
Bunyan, in which discussions of theology are mixed up with the
incidents of travel, and mythological personages are associated with
human beings: they are also garnished with names and phrases taken out
of Homer, and with other fragments of Greek tradition.
The myth of the Republic is more subtle and also more consistent than
either of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they
have, and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human
life. It will be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days
during which Er lay in a trance after he was slain coincide with the
time passed by the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious
observation, not often made, that good men who have lived in a
well-governed city (shall we say in a religious and respectable
society?) are more likely to make mistakes in their choice of life than
those who have had more experience of the world and of evil. It is a
more familiar remark that we constantly blame others when we have only
ourselves to blame; and the philosopher must acknowledge, however
reluctantly, that there is an element of chance in human life with
which it is sometimes impossible for man to cope. That men drink more
of the waters of forgetfulness than is good for them is a poetical
description of a familiar truth. We have many of us known men who, like
Odysseus, have wearied of ambition and have only desired rest. We
should like to know what became of the infants “dying almost as soon as
they were born,” but Plato only raises, without satisfying, our
curiosity. The two companies of souls, ascending and descending at
either chasm of heaven and earth, and conversing when they come out
into the meadow, the majestic figures of the judges sitting in heaven,
the voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of the great allegory which
have an indescribable grandeur and power. The remark already made
respecting the inconsistency of the two other myths must be extended
also to this: it is at once an orrery, or model of the heavens, and a
picture of the Day of Judgment.
The three myths are unlike anything else in Plato. There is an
Oriental, or rather an Egyptian element in them, and they have an
affinity to the mysteries and to the Orphic modes of worship. To a
certain extent they are un-Greek; at any rate there is hardly anything
like them in other Greek writings which have a serious purpose; in
spirit they are mediaeval. They are akin to what may be termed the
underground religion in all ages and countries. They are presented in
the most lively and graphic manner, but they are never insisted on as
true; it is only affirmed that nothing better can be said about a
future life. Plato seems to make use of them when he has reached the
limits of human knowledge; or, to borrow an expression of his own, when
he is standing on the outside of the intellectual world. They are very
simple in style; a few touches bring the picture home to the mind, and
make it present to us. They have also a kind of authority gained by the
employment of sacred and familiar names, just as mere fragments of the
words of Scripture, put together in any form and applied to any
subject, have a power of their own. They are a substitute for poetry
and mythology; and they are also a reform of mythology. The moral of
them may be summed up in a word or two: After death the Judgment; and
“there is some better thing remaining for the good than for the evil.”
All literature gathers into itself many elements of the past: for
example, the tale of the earth-born men in the Republic appears at
first sight to be an extravagant fancy, but it is restored to propriety
when we remember that it is based on a legendary belief. The art of
making stories of ghosts and apparitions credible is said to consist in
the manner of telling them. The effect is gained by many literary and
conversational devices, such as the previous raising of curiosity, the
mention of little circumstances, simplicity, picturesqueness, the
naturalness of the occasion, and the like. This art is possessed by
Plato in a degree which has never been equalled.
The myth in the Phaedrus is even greater than the myths which have been
already described, but is of a different character. It treats of a
former rather than of a future life. It represents the conflict of
reason aided by passion or righteous indignation on the one hand, and
of the animal lusts and instincts on the other. The soul of man has
followed the company of some god, and seen truth in the form of the
universal before it was born in this world. Our present life is the
result of the struggle which was then carried on. This world is
relative to a former world, as it is often projected into a future. We
ask the question, Where were men before birth? As we likewise enquire,
What will become of them after death? The first question is unfamiliar
to us, and therefore seems to be unnatural; but if we survey the whole
human race, it has been as influential and as widely spread as the
other. In the Phaedrus it is really a figure of speech in which the
“spiritual combat” of this life is represented. The majesty and power
of the whole passage—especially of what may be called the theme or
proem (beginning “The mind through all her being is immortal”)—can only
be rendered very inadequately in another language.
The myth in the Statesman relates to a former cycle of existence, in
which men were born of the earth, and by the reversal of the earth’s
motion had their lives reversed and were restored to youth and beauty:
the dead came to life, the old grew middle-aged, and the middle-aged
young; the youth became a child, the child an infant, the infant
vanished into the earth. The connection between the reversal of the
earth’s motion and the reversal of human life is of course verbal only,
yet Plato, like theologians in other ages, argues from the consistency
of the tale to its truth. The new order of the world was immediately
under the government of God; it was a state of innocence in which men
had neither wants nor cares, in which the earth brought forth all
things spontaneously, and God was to man what man now is to the
animals. There were no great estates, or families, or private
possessions, nor any traditions of the past, because men were all born
out of the earth. This is what Plato calls the “reign of Cronos;” and
in like manner he connects the reversal of the earth’s motion with some
legend of which he himself was probably the inventor.
The question is then asked, under which of these two cycles of
existence was man the happier,—under that of Cronos, which was a state
of innocence, or that of Zeus, which is our ordinary life? For a while
Plato balances the two sides of the serious controversy, which he has
suggested in a figure. The answer depends on another question: What use
did the children of Cronos make of their time? They had boundless
leisure and the faculty of discoursing, not only with one another, but
with the animals. Did they employ these advantages with a view to
philosophy, gathering from every nature some addition to their store of
knowledge? or, Did they pass their time in eating and drinking and
telling stories to one another and to the beasts?—in either case there
would be no difficulty in answering. But then, as Plato rather
mischievously adds, “Nobody knows what they did,” and therefore the
doubt must remain undetermined.
To the first there succeeds a second epoch. After another natural
convulsion, in which the order of the world and of human life is once
more reversed, God withdraws his guiding hand, and man is left to the
government of himself. The world begins again, and arts and laws are
slowly and painfully invented. A secular age succeeds to a
theocratical. In this fanciful tale Plato has dropped, or almost
dropped, the garb of mythology. He suggests several curious and
important thoughts, such as the possibility of a state of innocence,
the existence of a world without traditions, and the difference between
human and divine government. He has also carried a step further his
speculations concerning the abolition of the family and of property,
which he supposes to have no place among the children of Cronos any
more than in the ideal state.
It is characteristic of Plato and of his age to pass from the abstract
to the concrete, from poetry to reality. Language is the expression of
the seen, and also of the unseen, and moves in a region between them. A
great writer knows how to strike both these chords, sometimes remaining
within the sphere of the visible, and then again comprehending a wider
range and soaring to the abstract and universal. Even in the same
sentence he may employ both modes of speech not improperly or
inharmoniously. It is useless to criticise the broken metaphors of
Plato, if the effect of the whole is to create a picture not such as
can be painted on canvas, but which is full of life and meaning to the
reader. A poem may be contained in a word or two, which may call up not
one but many latent images; or half reveal to us by a sudden flash the
thoughts of many hearts. Often the rapid transition from one image to
another is pleasing to us: on the other hand, any single figure of
speech if too often repeated, or worked out too much at length, becomes
prosy and monotonous. In theology and philosophy we necessarily include
both “the moral law within and the starry heaven above,” and pass from
one to the other (compare for examples Psalms xviii. and xix.). Whether
such a use of language is puerile or noble depends upon the genius of
the writer or speaker, and the familiarity of the associations
employed.
In the myths and parables of Plato the ease and grace of conversation
is not forgotten: they are spoken, not written words, stories which are
told to a living audience, and so well told that we are more than
half-inclined to believe them (compare Phaedrus). As in conversation
too, the striking image or figure of speech is not forgotten, but is
quickly caught up, and alluded to again and again; as it would still be
in our own day in a genial and sympathetic society. The descriptions of
Plato have a greater life and reality than is to be found in any modern
writing. This is due to their homeliness and simplicity. Plato can do
with words just as he pleases; to him they are indeed “more plastic
than wax” (Republic). We are in the habit of opposing speech and
writing, poetry and prose. But he has discovered a use of language in
which they are united; which gives a fitting expression to the highest
truths; and in which the trifles of courtesy and the familiarities of
daily life are not overlooked.