The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, and may be
regarded either as introducing or following it. The two Dialogues
together contain the whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love,
which in the Republic and in the later writings of Plato is only
introduced playfully or as a figure of speech. But in the Phaedrus and
Symposium love and philosophy join hands, and one is an aspect of the
other. The spiritual and emotional part is elevated into the ideal, to
which in the Symposium mankind are described as looking forward, and
which in the Phaedrus, as well as in the Phaedo, they are seeking to
recover from a former state of existence. Whether the subject of the
Dialogue is love or rhetoric, or the union of the two, or the relation
of philosophy to love and to art in general, and to the human soul, will
be hereafter considered. And perhaps we may arrive at some conclusion
such as the following--that the dialogue is not strictly confined to a
single subject, but passes from one to another with the natural freedom
of conversation.
Phaedrus has been spending the morning with Lysias, the celebrated
rhetorician, and is going to refresh himself by taking a walk outside
the wall, when he is met by Socrates, who professes that he will not
leave him until he has delivered up the speech with which Lysias
has regaled him, and which he is carrying about in his mind, or more
probably in a book hidden under his cloak, and is intending to study
as he walks. The imputation is not denied, and the two agree to direct
their steps out of the public way along the stream of the Ilissus
towards a plane-tree which is seen in the distance. There, lying down
amidst pleasant sounds and scents, they will read the speech of Lysias.
The country is a novelty to Socrates, who never goes out of the town;
and hence he is full of admiration for the beauties of nature, which he
seems to be drinking in for the first time.
As they are on their way, Phaedrus asks the opinion of Socrates
respecting the local tradition of Boreas and Oreithyia. Socrates, after
a satirical allusion to the 'rationalizers' of his day, replies that he
has no time for these 'nice' interpretations of mythology, and he pities
anyone who has. When you once begin there is no end of them, and they
spring from an uncritical philosophy after all. 'The proper study of
mankind is man;' and he is a far more complex and wonderful being than
the serpent Typho. Socrates as yet does not know himself; and why should
he care to know about unearthly monsters? Engaged in such conversation,
they arrive at the plane-tree; when they have found a convenient
resting-place, Phaedrus pulls out the speech and reads:--
The speech consists of a foolish paradox which is to the effect that the
non-lover ought to be accepted rather than the lover--because he is more
rational, more agreeable, more enduring, less suspicious, less hurtful,
less boastful, less engrossing, and because there are more of them, and
for a great many other reasons which are equally unmeaning. Phaedrus is
captivated with the beauty of the periods, and wants to make Socrates
say that nothing was or ever could be written better. Socrates does not
think much of the matter, but then he has only attended to the form, and
in that he has detected several repetitions and other marks of haste. He
cannot agree with Phaedrus in the extreme value which he sets upon this
performance, because he is afraid of doing injustice to Anacreon and
Sappho and other great writers, and is almost inclined to think that he
himself, or rather some power residing within him, could make a speech
better than that of Lysias on the same theme, and also different from
his, if he may be allowed the use of a few commonplaces which all
speakers must equally employ.
Phaedrus is delighted at the prospect of having another speech, and
promises that he will set up a golden statue of Socrates at Delphi,
if he keeps his word. Some raillery ensues, and at length Socrates,
conquered by the threat that he shall never again hear a speech of
Lysias unless he fulfils his promise, veils his face and begins.
First, invoking the Muses and assuming ironically the person of the
non-lover (who is a lover all the same), he will enquire into the nature
and power of love. For this is a necessary preliminary to the other
question--How is the non-lover to be distinguished from the lover? In
all of us there are two principles--a better and a worse--reason and
desire, which are generally at war with one another; and the victory
of the rational is called temperance, and the victory of the irrational
intemperance or excess. The latter takes many forms and has many bad
names--gluttony, drunkenness, and the like. But of all the irrational
desires or excesses the greatest is that which is led away by desires
of a kindred nature to the enjoyment of personal beauty. And this is the
master power of love.
Here Socrates fancies that he detects in himself an unusual flow
of eloquence--this newly-found gift he can only attribute to the
inspiration of the place, which appears to be dedicated to the nymphs.
Starting again from the philosophical basis which has been laid down, he
proceeds to show how many advantages the non-lover has over the lover.
The one encourages softness and effeminacy and exclusiveness; he cannot
endure any superiority in his beloved; he will train him in luxury, he
will keep him out of society, he will deprive him of parents, friends,
money, knowledge, and of every other good, that he may have him all to
himself. Then again his ways are not ways of pleasantness; he is mighty
disagreeable; 'crabbed age and youth cannot live together.' At every
hour of the night and day he is intruding upon him; there is the
same old withered face and the remainder to match--and he is always
repeating, in season or out of season, the praises or dispraises of his
beloved, which are bad enough when he is sober, and published all over
the world when he is drunk. At length his love ceases; he is converted
into an enemy, and the spectacle may be seen of the lover running away
from the beloved, who pursues him with vain reproaches, and demands
his reward which the other refuses to pay. Too late the beloved learns,
after all his pains and disagreeables, that 'As wolves love lambs so
lovers love their loves.' (Compare Char.) Here is the end; the 'other'
or 'non-lover' part of the speech had better be understood, for if in
the censure of the lover Socrates has broken out in verse, what will
he not do in his praise of the non-lover? He has said his say and is
preparing to go away.
Phaedrus begs him to remain, at any rate until the heat of noon has
passed; he would like to have a little more conversation before they go.
Socrates, who has risen, recognizes the oracular sign which forbids him
to depart until he has done penance. His conscious has been awakened,
and like Stesichorus when he had reviled the lovely Helen he will sing
a palinode for having blasphemed the majesty of love. His palinode takes
the form of a myth.
Socrates begins his tale with a glorification of madness, which he
divides into four kinds: first, there is the art of divination or
prophecy--this, in a vein similar to that pervading the Cratylus and
Io, he connects with madness by an etymological explanation (mantike,
manike--compare oionoistike, oionistike, ''tis all one reckoning, save
the phrase is a little variations'); secondly, there is the art of
purification by mysteries; thirdly, poetry or the inspiration of the
Muses (compare Ion), without which no man can enter their temple. All
this shows that madness is one of heaven's blessings, and may sometimes
be a great deal better than sense. There is also a fourth kind of
madness--that of love--which cannot be explained without enquiring into
the nature of the soul.
All soul is immortal, for she is the source of all motion both in
herself and in others. Her form may be described in a figure as a
composite nature made up of a charioteer and a pair of winged steeds.
The steeds of the gods are immortal, but ours are one mortal and the
other immortal. The immortal soul soars upwards into the heavens, but
the mortal drops her plumes and settles upon the earth.
Now the use of the wing is to rise and carry the downward element into
the upper world--there to behold beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the other
things of God by which the soul is nourished. On a certain day Zeus the
lord of heaven goes forth in a winged chariot; and an array of gods
and demi-gods and of human souls in their train, follows him. There are
glorious and blessed sights in the interior of heaven, and he who will
may freely behold them. The great vision of all is seen at the feast of
the gods, when they ascend the heights of the empyrean--all but Hestia,
who is left at home to keep house. The chariots of the gods glide
readily upwards and stand upon the outside; the revolution of the
spheres carries them round, and they have a vision of the world beyond.
But the others labour in vain; for the mortal steed, if he has not been
properly trained, keeps them down and sinks them towards the earth. Of
the world which is beyond the heavens, who can tell? There is an essence
formless, colourless, intangible, perceived by the mind only, dwelling
in the region of true knowledge. The divine mind in her revolution
enjoys this fair prospect, and beholds justice, temperance, and
knowledge in their everlasting essence. When fulfilled with the sight
of them she returns home, and the charioteer puts up the horses in their
stable, and gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. This is the
life of the gods; the human soul tries to reach the same heights, but
hardly succeeds; and sometimes the head of the charioteer rises above,
and sometimes sinks below, the fair vision, and he is at last obliged,
after much contention, to turn away and leave the plain of truth. But if
the soul has followed in the train of her god and once beheld truth she
is preserved from harm, and is carried round in the next revolution of
the spheres; and if always following, and always seeing the truth, is
then for ever unharmed. If, however, she drops her wings and falls to
the earth, then she takes the form of man, and the soul which has seen
most of the truth passes into a philosopher or lover; that which has
seen truth in the second degree, into a king or warrior; the third, into
a householder or money-maker; the fourth, into a gymnast; the fifth,
into a prophet or mystic; the sixth, into a poet or imitator; the
seventh, into a husbandman or craftsman; the eighth, into a sophist or
demagogue; the ninth, into a tyrant. All these are states of probation,
wherein he who lives righteously is improved, and he who lives
unrighteously deteriorates. After death comes the judgment; the bad
depart to houses of correction under the earth, the good to places
of joy in heaven. When a thousand years have elapsed the souls meet
together and choose the lives which they will lead for another period of
existence. The soul which three times in succession has chosen the life
of a philosopher or of a lover who is not without philosophy receives
her wings at the close of the third millennium; the remainder have to
complete a cycle of ten thousand years before their wings are restored
to them. Each time there is full liberty of choice. The soul of a man
may descend into a beast, and return again into the form of man. But the
form of man will only be taken by the soul which has once seen truth and
acquired some conception of the universal:--this is the recollection of
the knowledge which she attained when in the company of the Gods. And
men in general recall only with difficulty the things of another world,
but the mind of the philosopher has a better remembrance of them. For
when he beholds the visible beauty of earth his enraptured soul passes
in thought to those glorious sights of justice and wisdom and temperance
and truth which she once gazed upon in heaven. Then she celebrated holy
mysteries and beheld blessed apparitions shining in pure light, herself
pure, and not as yet entombed in the body. And still, like a bird eager
to quit its cage, she flutters and looks upwards, and is therefore
deemed mad. Such a recollection of past days she receives through sight,
the keenest of our senses, because beauty, alone of the ideas, has any
representation on earth: wisdom is invisible to mortal eyes. But the
corrupted nature, blindly excited by this vision of beauty, rushes on
to enjoy, and would fain wallow like a brute beast in sensual pleasures.
Whereas the true mystic, who has seen the many sights of bliss, when he
beholds a god-like form or face is amazed with delight, and if he were
not afraid of being thought mad he would fall down and worship. Then
the stiffened wing begins to relax and grow again; desire which has
been imprisoned pours over the soul of the lover; the germ of the wing
unfolds, and stings, and pangs of birth, like the cutting of teeth, are
everywhere felt. (Compare Symp.) Father and mother, and goods and laws
and proprieties are nothing to him; his beloved is his physician, who
can alone cure his pain. An apocryphal sacred writer says that the power
which thus works in him is by mortals called love, but the immortals
call him dove, or the winged one, in order to represent the force of
his wings--such at any rate is his nature. Now the characters of lovers
depend upon the god whom they followed in the other world; and they
choose their loves in this world accordingly. The followers of Ares
are fierce and violent; those of Zeus seek out some philosophical and
imperial nature; the attendants of Here find a royal love; and in like
manner the followers of every god seek a love who is like their god; and
to him they communicate the nature which they have received from their
god. The manner in which they take their love is as follows:--
I told you about the charioteer and his two steeds, the one a noble
animal who is guided by word and admonition only, the other an
ill-looking villain who will hardly yield to blow or spur. Together all
three, who are a figure of the soul, approach the vision of love. And
now a fierce conflict begins. The ill-conditioned steed rushes on to
enjoy, but the charioteer, who beholds the beloved with awe, falls back
in adoration, and forces both the steeds on their haunches; again the
evil steed rushes forwards and pulls shamelessly. The conflict grows
more and more severe; and at last the charioteer, throwing himself
backwards, forces the bit out of the clenched teeth of the brute, and
pulling harder than ever at the reins, covers his tongue and jaws with
blood, and forces him to rest his legs and haunches with pain upon the
ground. When this has happened several times, the villain is tamed and
humbled, and from that time forward the soul of the lover follows the
beloved in modesty and holy fear. And now their bliss is consummated;
the same image of love dwells in the breast of either, and if they have
self-control, they pass their lives in the greatest happiness which is
attainable by man--they continue masters of themselves, and conquer in
one of the three heavenly victories. But if they choose the lower
life of ambition they may still have a happy destiny, though inferior,
because they have not the approval of the whole soul. At last they leave
the body and proceed on their pilgrim's progress, and those who have
once begun can never go back. When the time comes they receive their
wings and fly away, and the lovers have the same wings.