These are the blessings of love, and thus have I made my recantation in
finer language than before: I did so in order to please Phaedrus. If I
said what was wrong at first, please to attribute my error to Lysias,
who ought to study philosophy instead of rhetoric, and then he will not
mislead his disciple Phaedrus.
Phaedrus is afraid that he will lose conceit of Lysias, and that Lysias
will be out of conceit with himself, and leave off making speeches,
for the politicians have been deriding him. Socrates is of opinion that
there is small danger of this; the politicians are themselves the
great rhetoricians of the age, who desire to attain immortality by the
authorship of laws. And therefore there is nothing with which they can
reproach Lysias in being a writer; but there may be disgrace in being a
bad one.
And what is good or bad writing or speaking? While the sun is hot in the
sky above us, let us ask that question: since by rational conversation
man lives, and not by the indulgence of bodily pleasures. And the
grasshoppers who are chirruping around may carry our words to the
Muses, who are their patronesses; for the grasshoppers were human beings
themselves in a world before the Muses, and when the Muses came they
died of hunger for the love of song. And they carry to them in heaven
the report of those who honour them on earth.
The first rule of good speaking is to know and speak the truth; as a
Spartan proverb says, 'true art is truth'; whereas rhetoric is an art of
enchantment, which makes things appear good and evil, like and unlike,
as the speaker pleases. Its use is not confined, as people commonly
suppose, to arguments in the law courts and speeches in the assembly;
it is rather a part of the art of disputation, under which are included
both the rules of Gorgias and the eristic of Zeno. But it is not wholly
devoid of truth. Superior knowledge enables us to deceive another by the
help of resemblances, and to escape from such a deception when employed
against ourselves. We see therefore that even in rhetoric an element of
truth is required. For if we do not know the truth, we can neither make
the gradual departures from truth by which men are most easily deceived,
nor guard ourselves against deception.
Socrates then proposes that they shall use the two speeches as
illustrations of the art of rhetoric; first distinguishing between the
debatable and undisputed class of subjects. In the debatable class there
ought to be a definition of all disputed matters. But there was no such
definition in the speech of Lysias; nor is there any order or connection
in his words any more than in a nursery rhyme. With this he compares the
regular divisions of the other speech, which was his own (and yet not
his own, for the local deities must have inspired him). Although only a
playful composition, it will be found to embody two principles: first,
that of synthesis or the comprehension of parts in a whole; secondly,
analysis, or the resolution of the whole into parts. These are the
processes of division and generalization which are so dear to the
dialectician, that king of men. They are effected by dialectic, and
not by rhetoric, of which the remains are but scanty after order and
arrangement have been subtracted. There is nothing left but a heap
of 'ologies' and other technical terms invented by Polus, Theodorus,
Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, and others, who have rules for everything, and
who teach how to be short or long at pleasure. Prodicus showed his good
sense when he said that there was a better thing than either to be short
or long, which was to be of convenient length.
Still, notwithstanding the absurdities of Polus and others, rhetoric has
great power in public assemblies. This power, however, is not given by
any technical rules, but is the gift of genius. The real art is always
being confused by rhetoricians with the preliminaries of the art. The
perfection of oratory is like the perfection of anything else; natural
power must be aided by art. But the art is not that which is taught in
the schools of rhetoric; it is nearer akin to philosophy. Pericles, for
instance, who was the most accomplished of all speakers, derived his
eloquence not from rhetoric but from the philosophy of nature which
he learnt of Anaxagoras. True rhetoric is like medicine, and the
rhetorician has to consider the natures of men's souls as the physician
considers the natures of their bodies. Such and such persons are to be
affected in this way, such and such others in that; and he must know the
times and the seasons for saying this or that. This is not an easy task,
and this, if there be such an art, is the art of rhetoric.
I know that there are some professors of the art who maintain
probability to be stronger than truth. But we maintain that probability
is engendered by likeness of the truth which can only be attained by
the knowledge of it, and that the aim of the good man should not be to
please or persuade his fellow-servants, but to please his good masters
who are the gods. Rhetoric has a fair beginning in this.
Enough of the art of speaking; let us now proceed to consider the true
use of writing. There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of
writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he
would only spoil men's memories and take away their understandings. From
this tale, of which young Athens will probably make fun, may be gathered
the lesson that writing is inferior to speech. For it is like a picture,
which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful
likeness of a living creature. It has no power of adaptation, but uses
the same words for all. It is not a legitimate son of knowledge, but a
bastard, and when an attack is made upon this bastard neither parent
nor anyone else is there to defend it. The husbandman will not seriously
incline to sow his seed in such a hot-bed or garden of Adonis; he will
rather sow in the natural soil of the human soul which has depth of
earth; and he will anticipate the inner growth of the mind, by writing
only, if at all, as a remedy against old age. The natural process will
be far nobler, and will bring forth fruit in the minds of others as well
as in his own.
The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,--that until a man knows
the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other
men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than
the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when
delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man's own
bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others.
Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain
become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators,
we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these
principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but
philosophers. All others are mere flatterers and putters together of
words. This is the message which Phaedrus undertakes to carry to Lysias
from the local deities, and Socrates himself will carry a similar
message to his favourite Isocrates, whose future distinction as a great
rhetorician he prophesies. The heat of the day has passed, and after
offering up a prayer to Pan and the nymphs, Socrates and Phaedrus
depart.
There are two principal controversies which have been raised about the
Phaedrus; the first relates to the subject, the second to the date of
the Dialogue.
There seems to be a notion that the work of a great artist like Plato
cannot fail in unity, and that the unity of a dialogue requires a single
subject. But the conception of unity really applies in very different
degrees and ways to different kinds of art; to a statue, for example,
far more than to any kind of literary composition, and to some species
of literature far more than to others. Nor does the dialogue appear
to be a style of composition in which the requirement of unity is most
stringent; nor should the idea of unity derived from one sort of art
be hastily transferred to another. The double titles of several of the
Platonic Dialogues are a further proof that the severer rule was not
observed by Plato. The Republic is divided between the search after
justice and the construction of the ideal state; the Parmenides between
the criticism of the Platonic ideas and of the Eleatic one or being;
the Gorgias between the art of speaking and the nature of the good;
the Sophist between the detection of the Sophist and the correlation
of ideas. The Theaetetus, the Politicus, and the Philebus have also
digressions which are but remotely connected with the main subject.
Thus the comparison of Plato's other writings, as well as the reason of
the thing, lead us to the conclusion that we must not expect to find one
idea pervading a whole work, but one, two, or more, as the invention
of the writer may suggest, or his fancy wander. If each dialogue were
confined to the development of a single idea, this would appear on the
face of the dialogue, nor could any controversy be raised as to whether
the Phaedrus treated of love or rhetoric. But the truth is that Plato
subjects himself to no rule of this sort. Like every great artist he
gives unity of form to the different and apparently distracting topics
which he brings together. He works freely and is not to be supposed to
have arranged every part of the dialogue before he begins to write.
He fastens or weaves together the frame of his discourse loosely and
imperfectly, and which is the warp and which is the woof cannot always
be determined.
The subjects of the Phaedrus (exclusive of the short introductory
passage about mythology which is suggested by the local tradition) are
first the false or conventional art of rhetoric; secondly, love or the
inspiration of beauty and knowledge, which is described as madness;
thirdly, dialectic or the art of composition and division; fourthly, the
true rhetoric, which is based upon dialectic, and is neither the art of
persuasion nor knowledge of the truth alone, but the art of persuasion
founded on knowledge of truth and knowledge of character; fifthly, the
superiority of the spoken over the written word. The continuous thread
which appears and reappears throughout is rhetoric; this is the ground
into which the rest of the Dialogue is worked, in parts embroidered with
fine words which are not in Socrates' manner, as he says, 'in order to
please Phaedrus.' The speech of Lysias which has thrown Phaedrus into an
ecstacy is adduced as an example of the false rhetoric; the first speech
of Socrates, though an improvement, partakes of the same character; his
second speech, which is full of that higher element said to have been
learned of Anaxagoras by Pericles, and which in the midst of poetry does
not forget order, is an illustration of the higher or true rhetoric.
This higher rhetoric is based upon dialectic, and dialectic is a sort
of inspiration akin to love (compare Symp.); in these two aspects of
philosophy the technicalities of rhetoric are absorbed. And so the
example becomes also the deeper theme of discourse. The true knowledge
of things in heaven and earth is based upon enthusiasm or love of
the ideas going before us and ever present to us in this world and in
another; and the true order of speech or writing proceeds accordingly.
Love, again, has three degrees: first, of interested love corresponding
to the conventionalities of rhetoric; secondly, of disinterested or
mad love, fixed on objects of sense, and answering, perhaps, to poetry;
thirdly, of disinterested love directed towards the unseen, answering
to dialectic or the science of the ideas. Lastly, the art of rhetoric
in the lower sense is found to rest on a knowledge of the natures and
characters of men, which Socrates at the commencement of the Dialogue
has described as his own peculiar study.
Thus amid discord a harmony begins to appear; there are many links of
connection which are not visible at first sight. At the same time the
Phaedrus, although one of the most beautiful of the Platonic Dialogues,
is also more irregular than any other. For insight into the world, for
sustained irony, for depth of thought, there is no Dialogue superior,
or perhaps equal to it. Nevertheless the form of the work has tended to
obscure some of Plato's higher aims.
The first speech is composed 'in that balanced style in which the wise
love to talk' (Symp.). The characteristics of rhetoric are insipidity,
mannerism, and monotonous parallelism of clauses. There is more rhythm
than reason; the creative power of imagination is wanting.
''Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.'
Plato has seized by anticipation the spirit which hung over Greek
literature for a thousand years afterwards. Yet doubtless there were
some who, like Phaedrus, felt a delight in the harmonious cadence and
the pedantic reasoning of the rhetoricians newly imported from Sicily,
which had ceased to be awakened in them by really great works, such as
the odes of Anacreon or Sappho or the orations of Pericles. That the
first speech was really written by Lysias is improbable. Like the poem
of Solon, or the story of Thamus and Theuth, or the funeral oration of
Aspasia (if genuine), or the pretence of Socrates in the Cratylus that
his knowledge of philology is derived from Euthyphro, the invention
is really due to the imagination of Plato, and may be compared to the
parodies of the Sophists in the Protagoras. Numerous fictions of this
sort occur in the Dialogues, and the gravity of Plato has sometimes
imposed upon his commentators. The introduction of a considerable
writing of another would seem not to be in keeping with a great work of
art, and has no parallel elsewhere.
In the second speech Socrates is exhibited as beating the rhetoricians
at their own weapons; he 'an unpractised man and they masters of the
art.' True to his character, he must, however, profess that the speech
which he makes is not his own, for he knows nothing of himself. (Compare
Symp.) Regarded as a rhetorical exercise, the superiority of his speech
seems to consist chiefly in a better arrangement of the topics; he
begins with a definition of love, and he gives weight to his words by
going back to general maxims; a lesser merit is the greater liveliness
of Socrates, which hurries him into verse and relieves the monotony of
the style.
But Plato had doubtless a higher purpose than to exhibit Socrates as the
rival or superior of the Athenian rhetoricians. Even in the speech of
Lysias there is a germ of truth, and this is further developed in the
parallel oration of Socrates. First, passionate love is overthrown by
the sophistical or interested, and then both yield to that higher view
of love which is afterwards revealed to us. The extreme of commonplace
is contrasted with the most ideal and imaginative of speculations.
Socrates, half in jest and to satisfy his own wild humour, takes the
disguise of Lysias, but he is also in profound earnest and in a deeper
vein of irony than usual. Having improvised his own speech, which is
based upon the model of the preceding, he condemns them both. Yet the
condemnation is not to be taken seriously, for he is evidently trying
to express an aspect of the truth. To understand him, we must make
abstraction of morality and of the Greek manner of regarding the
relation of the sexes. In this, as in his other discussions about love,
what Plato says of the loves of men must be transferred to the loves
of women before we can attach any serious meaning to his words. Had he
lived in our times he would have made the transposition himself. But
seeing in his own age the impossibility of woman being the intellectual
helpmate or friend of man (except in the rare instances of a Diotima
or an Aspasia), seeing that, even as to personal beauty, her place was
taken by young mankind instead of womankind, he tries to work out the
problem of love without regard to the distinctions of nature. And full
of the evils which he recognized as flowing from the spurious form of
love, he proceeds with a deep meaning, though partly in joke, to show
that the 'non-lover's' love is better than the 'lover's.'
We may raise the same question in another form: Is marriage preferable
with or without love? 'Among ourselves,' as we may say, a little
parodying the words of Pausanias in the Symposium, 'there would be
one answer to this question: the practice and feeling of some foreign
countries appears to be more doubtful.' Suppose a modern Socrates,
in defiance of the received notions of society and the sentimental
literature of the day, alone against all the writers and readers of
novels, to suggest this enquiry, would not the younger 'part of the
world be ready to take off its coat and run at him might and main?'
(Republic.) Yet, if like Peisthetaerus in Aristophanes, he could
persuade the 'birds' to hear him, retiring a little behind a rampart,
not of pots and dishes, but of unreadable books, he might have something
to say for himself. Might he not argue, 'that a rational being should
not follow the dictates of passion in the most important act of his or
her life'? Who would willingly enter into a contract at first sight,
almost without thought, against the advice and opinion of his friends,
at a time when he acknowledges that he is not in his right mind? And yet
they are praised by the authors of romances, who reject the warnings of
their friends or parents, rather than those who listen to them in such
matters. Two inexperienced persons, ignorant of the world and of one
another, how can they be said to choose?--they draw lots, whence also
the saying, 'marriage is a lottery.' Then he would describe their way of
life after marriage; how they monopolize one another's affections to
the exclusion of friends and relations: how they pass their days in
unmeaning fondness or trivial conversation; how the inferior of the
two drags the other down to his or her level; how the cares of a family
'breed meanness in their souls.' In the fulfilment of military or public
duties, they are not helpers but hinderers of one another: they cannot
undertake any noble enterprise, such as makes the names of men and women
famous, from domestic considerations. Too late their eyes are opened;
they were taken unawares and desire to part company. Better, he would
say, a 'little love at the beginning,' for heaven might have increased
it; but now their foolish fondness has changed into mutual dislike. In
the days of their honeymoon they never understood that they must provide
against offences, that they must have interests, that they must learn
the art of living as well as loving. Our misogamist will not appeal to
Anacreon or Sappho for a confirmation of his view, but to the universal
experience of mankind. How much nobler, in conclusion, he will say, is
friendship, which does not receive unmeaning praises from novelists and
poets, is not exacting or exclusive, is not impaired by familiarity, is
much less expensive, is not so likely to take offence, seldom changes,
and may be dissolved from time to time without the assistance of the
courts. Besides, he will remark that there is a much greater choice of
friends than of wives--you may have more of them and they will be far
more improving to your mind. They will not keep you dawdling at home, or
dancing attendance upon them; or withdraw you from the great world and
stirring scenes of life and action which would make a man of you.
In such a manner, turning the seamy side outwards, a modern Socrates
might describe the evils of married and domestic life. They are evils
which mankind in general have agreed to conceal, partly because they are
compensated by greater goods. Socrates or Archilochus would soon have
to sing a palinode for the injustice done to lovely Helen, or some
misfortune worse than blindness might be fall them. Then they would take
up their parable again and say:--that there were two loves, a higher and
a lower, holy and unholy, a love of the mind and a love of the body.
'Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
.....
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.'
But this true love of the mind cannot exist between two souls, until
they are purified from the grossness of earthly passion: they must pass
through a time of trial and conflict first; in the language of religion
they must be converted or born again. Then they would see the world
transformed into a scene of heavenly beauty; a divine idea would
accompany them in all their thoughts and actions. Something too of the
recollections of childhood might float about them still; they might
regain that old simplicity which had been theirs in other days at their
first entrance on life. And although their love of one another was ever
present to them, they would acknowledge also a higher love of duty and
of God, which united them. And their happiness would depend upon their
preserving in them this principle--not losing the ideals of justice and
holiness and truth, but renewing them at the fountain of light. When
they have attained to this exalted state, let them marry (something too
may be conceded to the animal nature of man): or live together in holy
and innocent friendship. The poet might describe in eloquent words
the nature of such a union; how after many struggles the true love was
found: how the two passed their lives together in the service of God and
man; how their characters were reflected upon one another, and seemed
to grow more like year by year; how they read in one another's eyes the
thoughts, wishes, actions of the other; how they saw each other in God;
how in a figure they grew wings like doves, and were 'ready to fly away
together and be at rest.' And lastly, he might tell how, after a time
at no long intervals, first one and then the other fell asleep, and
'appeared to the unwise' to die, but were reunited in another state of
being, in which they saw justice and holiness and truth, not according
to the imperfect copies of them which are found in this world, but
justice absolute in existence absolute, and so of the rest. And they
would hold converse not only with each other, but with blessed souls
everywhere; and would be employed in the service of God, every soul
fulfilling his own nature and character, and would see into the wonders
of earth and heaven, and trace the works of creation to their author.
So, partly in jest but also 'with a certain degree of seriousness,'
we may appropriate to ourselves the words of Plato. The use of such a
parody, though very imperfect, is to transfer his thoughts to our sphere
of religion and feeling, to bring him nearer to us and us to him. Like
the Scriptures, Plato admits of endless applications, if we allow for
the difference of times and manners; and we lose the better half of
him when we regard his Dialogues merely as literary compositions. Any
ancient work which is worth reading has a practical and speculative as
well as a literary interest. And in Plato, more than in any other Greek
writer, the local and transitory is inextricably blended with what is
spiritual and eternal. Socrates is necessarily ironical; for he has to
withdraw from the received opinions and beliefs of mankind. We cannot
separate the transitory from the permanent; nor can we translate the
language of irony into that of plain reflection and common sense. But we
can imagine the mind of Socrates in another age and country; and we can
interpret him by analogy with reference to the errors and prejudices
which prevail among ourselves. To return to the Phaedrus:--
Both speeches are strongly condemned by Socrates as sinful and
blasphemous towards the god Love, and as worthy only of some haunt of
sailors to which good manners were unknown. The meaning of this and
other wild language to the same effect, which is introduced by way of
contrast to the formality of the two speeches (Socrates has a sense of
relief when he has escaped from the trammels of rhetoric), seems to
be that the two speeches proceed upon the supposition that love is
and ought to be interested, and that no such thing as a real or
disinterested passion, which would be at the same time lasting, could
be conceived. 'But did I call this "love"? O God, forgive my blasphemy.
This is not love. Rather it is the love of the world. But there is
another kingdom of love, a kingdom not of this world, divine, eternal.
And this other love I will now show you in a mystery.'
Then follows the famous myth, which is a sort of parable, and like other
parables ought not to receive too minute an interpretation. In all such
allegories there is a great deal which is merely ornamental, and the
interpreter has to separate the important from the unimportant. Socrates
himself has given the right clue when, in using his own discourse
afterwards as the text for his examination of rhetoric, he characterizes
it as a 'partly true and tolerably credible mythus,' in which amid
poetical figures, order and arrangement were not forgotten.
The soul is described in magnificent language as the self-moved and the
source of motion in all other things. This is the philosophical theme or
proem of the whole. But ideas must be given through something, and under
the pretext that to realize the true nature of the soul would be not
only tedious but impossible, we at once pass on to describe the souls
of gods as well as men under the figure of two winged steeds and a
charioteer. No connection is traced between the soul as the great motive
power and the triple soul which is thus imaged. There is no difficulty
in seeing that the charioteer represents the reason, or that the black
horse is the symbol of the sensual or concupiscent element of human
nature. The white horse also represents rational impulse, but the
description, 'a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and a
follower of true glory,' though similar, does not at once recall the
'spirit' (thumos) of the Republic. The two steeds really correspond in a
figure more nearly to the appetitive and moral or semi-rational soul
of Aristotle. And thus, for the first time perhaps in the history
of philosophy, we have represented to us the threefold division of
psychology. The image of the charioteer and the steeds has been compared
with a similar image which occurs in the verses of Parmenides; but it
is important to remark that the horses of Parmenides have no allegorical
meaning, and that the poet is only describing his own approach in a
chariot to the regions of light and the house of the goddess of truth.
The triple soul has had a previous existence, in which following in
the train of some god, from whom she derived her character, she beheld
partially and imperfectly the vision of absolute truth. All her
after existence, passed in many forms of men and animals, is spent in
regaining this. The stages of the conflict are many and various; and
she is sorely let and hindered by the animal desires of the inferior or
concupiscent steed. Again and again she beholds the flashing beauty of
the beloved. But before that vision can be finally enjoyed the animal
desires must be subjected.
The moral or spiritual element in man is represented by the immortal
steed which, like thumos in the Republic, always sides with the reason.
Both are dragged out of their course by the furious impulses of desire.
In the end something is conceded to the desires, after they have been
finally humbled and overpowered. And yet the way of philosophy, or
perfect love of the unseen, is total abstinence from bodily delights.
'But all men cannot receive this saying': in the lower life of ambition
they may be taken off their guard and stoop to folly unawares, and then,
although they do not attain to the highest bliss, yet if they have once
conquered they may be happy enough.
The language of the Meno and the Phaedo as well as of the Phaedrus
seems to show that at one time of his life Plato was quite serious in
maintaining a former state of existence. His mission was to realize the
abstract; in that, all good and truth, all the hopes of this and another
life seemed to centre. To him abstractions, as we call them, were
another kind of knowledge--an inner and unseen world, which seemed
to exist far more truly than the fleeting objects of sense which were
without him. When we are once able to imagine the intense power which
abstract ideas exercised over the mind of Plato, we see that there was
no more difficulty to him in realizing the eternal existence of them
and of the human minds which were associated with them, in the past and
future than in the present. The difficulty was not how they could exist,
but how they could fail to exist. In the attempt to regain this 'saving'
knowledge of the ideas, the sense was found to be as great an enemy as
the desires; and hence two things which to us seem quite distinct are
inextricably blended in the representation of Plato.
Thus far we may believe that Plato was serious in his conception of the
soul as a motive power, in his reminiscence of a former state of being,
in his elevation of the reason over sense and passion, and perhaps in
his doctrine of transmigration. Was he equally serious in the rest? For
example, are we to attribute his tripartite division of the soul to the
gods? Or is this merely assigned to them by way of parallelism with men?
The latter is the more probable; for the horses of the gods are both
white, i.e. their every impulse is in harmony with reason; their
dualism, on the other hand, only carries out the figure of the chariot.
Is he serious, again, in regarding love as 'a madness'? That seems to
arise out of the antithesis to the former conception of love. At the
same time he appears to intimate here, as in the Ion, Apology, Meno,
and elsewhere, that there is a faculty in man, whether to be termed in
modern language genius, or inspiration, or imagination, or idealism,
or communion with God, which cannot be reduced to rule and measure.
Perhaps, too, he is ironically repeating the common language of mankind
about philosophy, and is turning their jest into a sort of earnest.
(Compare Phaedo, Symp.) Or is he serious in holding that each soul bears
the character of a god? He may have had no other account to give of
the differences of human characters to which he afterwards refers. Or,
again, in his absurd derivation of mantike and oionistike and imeros
(compare Cratylus)? It is characteristic of the irony of Socrates to
mix up sense and nonsense in such a way that no exact line can be drawn
between them. And allegory helps to increase this sort of confusion.
As is often the case in the parables and prophecies of Scripture, the
meaning is allowed to break through the figure, and the details are not
always consistent. When the charioteers and their steeds stand upon the
dome of heaven they behold the intangible invisible essences which
are not objects of sight. This is because the force of language can
no further go. Nor can we dwell much on the circumstance, that at the
completion of ten thousand years all are to return to the place from
whence they came; because he represents their return as dependent on
their own good conduct in the successive stages of existence. Nor again
can we attribute anything to the accidental inference which would also
follow, that even a tyrant may live righteously in the condition of life
to which fate has called him ('he aiblins might, I dinna ken'). But
to suppose this would be at variance with Plato himself and with Greek
notions generally. He is much more serious in distinguishing men from
animals by their recognition of the universal which they have known in
a former state, and in denying that this gift of reason can ever be
obliterated or lost. In the language of some modern theologians he might
be said to maintain the 'final perseverance' of those who have entered
on their pilgrim's progress. Other intimations of a 'metaphysic' or
'theology' of the future may also be discerned in him: (1) The moderate
predestinarianism which here, as in the Republic, acknowledges the
element of chance in human life, and yet asserts the freedom and
responsibility of man; (2) The recognition of a moral as well as an
intellectual principle in man under the image of an immortal steed; (3)
The notion that the divine nature exists by the contemplation of
ideas of virtue and justice--or, in other words, the assertion of the
essentially moral nature of God; (4) Again, there is the hint that human
life is a life of aspiration only, and that the true ideal is not to
be found in art; (5) There occurs the first trace of the distinction
between necessary and contingent matter; (6) The conception of the soul
itself as the motive power and reason of the universe.
The conception of the philosopher, or the philosopher and lover in one,
as a sort of madman, may be compared with the Republic and Theaetetus,
in both of which the philosopher is regarded as a stranger and monster
upon the earth. The whole myth, like the other myths of Plato, describes
in a figure things which are beyond the range of human faculties, or
inaccessible to the knowledge of the age. That philosophy should be
represented as the inspiration of love is a conception that has already
become familiar to us in the Symposium, and is the expression partly of
Plato's enthusiasm for the idea, and is also an indication of the real
power exercised by the passion of friendship over the mind of the Greek.
The master in the art of love knew that there was a mystery in these
feelings and their associations, and especially in the contrast of
the sensible and permanent which is afforded by them; and he sought
to explain this, as he explained universal ideas, by a reference to a
former state of existence. The capriciousness of love is also derived
by him from an attachment to some god in a former world. The singular
remark that the beloved is more affected than the lover at the final
consummation of their love, seems likewise to hint at a psychological
truth.
It is difficult to exhaust the meanings of a work like the Phaedrus,
which indicates so much more than it expresses; and is full of
inconsistencies and ambiguities which were not perceived by Plato
himself. For example, when he is speaking of the soul does he mean the
human or the divine soul? and are they both equally self-moving and
constructed on the same threefold principle? We should certainly be
disposed to reply that the self-motive is to be attributed to God only;
and on the other hand that the appetitive and passionate elements have
no place in His nature. So we should infer from the reason of the thing,
but there is no indication in Plato's own writings that this was his
meaning. Or, again, when he explains the different characters of men
by referring them back to the nature of the God whom they served in a
former state of existence, we are inclined to ask whether he is serious:
Is he not rather using a mythological figure, here as elsewhere, to draw
a veil over things which are beyond the limits of mortal knowledge? Once
more, in speaking of beauty is he really thinking of some external form
such as might have been expressed in the works of Phidias or Praxiteles;
and not rather of an imaginary beauty, of a sort which extinguishes
rather than stimulates vulgar love,--a heavenly beauty like that which
flashed from time to time before the eyes of Dante or Bunyan? Surely
the latter. But it would be idle to reconcile all the details of the
passage: it is a picture, not a system, and a picture which is for the
greater part an allegory, and an allegory which allows the meaning to
come through. The image of the charioteer and his steeds is placed side
by side with the absolute forms of justice, temperance, and the like,
which are abstract ideas only, and which are seen with the eye of the
soul in her heavenly journey. The first impression of such a passage, in
which no attempt is made to separate the substance from the form, is far
truer than an elaborate philosophical analysis.
It is too often forgotten that the whole of the second discourse of
Socrates is only an allegory, or figure of speech. For this reason, it
is unnecessary to enquire whether the love of which Plato speaks is
the love of men or of women. It is really a general idea which includes
both, and in which the sensual element, though not wholly eradicated, is
reduced to order and measure. We must not attribute a meaning to
every fanciful detail. Nor is there any need to call up revolting
associations, which as a matter of good taste should be banished, and
which were far enough away from the mind of Plato. These and similar
passages should be interpreted by the Laws. Nor is there anything in the
Symposium, or in the Charmides, in reality inconsistent with the sterner
rule which Plato lays down in the Laws. At the same time it is not to be
denied that love and philosophy are described by Socrates in figures
of speech which would not be used in Christian times; or that nameless
vices were prevalent at Athens and in other Greek cities; or that
friendships between men were a more sacred tie, and had a more important
social and educational influence than among ourselves. (See note on
Symposium.)
In the Phaedrus, as well as in the Symposium, there are two kinds of
love, a lower and a higher, the one answering to the natural wants of
the animal, the other rising above them and contemplating with religious
awe the forms of justice, temperance, holiness, yet finding them
also 'too dazzling bright for mortal eye,' and shrinking from them
in amazement. The opposition between these two kinds of love may be
compared to the opposition between the flesh and the spirit in the
Epistles of St. Paul. It would be unmeaning to suppose that Plato, in
describing the spiritual combat, in which the rational soul is
finally victor and master of both the steeds, condescends to allow any
indulgence of unnatural lusts.
Two other thoughts about love are suggested by this passage. First of
all, love is represented here, as in the Symposium, as one of the great
powers of nature, which takes many forms and two principal ones, having
a predominant influence over the lives of men. And these two, though
opposed, are not absolutely separated the one from the other. Plato,
with his great knowledge of human nature, was well aware how easily
one is transformed into the other, or how soon the noble but fleeting
aspiration may return into the nature of the animal, while the
lower instinct which is latent always remains. The intermediate
sentimentalism, which has exercised so great an influence on the
literature of modern Europe, had no place in the classical times of
Hellas; the higher love, of which Plato speaks, is the subject, not of
poetry or fiction, but of philosophy.
Secondly, there seems to be indicated a natural yearning of the human
mind that the great ideas of justice, temperance, wisdom, should be
expressed in some form of visible beauty, like the absolute purity and
goodness which Christian art has sought to realize in the person of
the Madonna. But although human nature has often attempted to represent
outwardly what can be only 'spiritually discerned,' men feel that in
pictures and images, whether painted or carved, or described in words
only, we have not the substance but the shadow of the truth which is in
heaven. There is no reason to suppose that in the fairest works of Greek
art, Plato ever conceived himself to behold an image, however faint, of
ideal truths. 'Not in that way was wisdom seen.'
We may now pass on to the second part of the Dialogue, which is a
criticism on the first. Rhetoric is assailed on various grounds: first,
as desiring to persuade, without a knowledge of the truth; and secondly,
as ignoring the distinction between certain and probable matter. The
three speeches are then passed in review: the first of them has no
definition of the nature of love, and no order in the topics (being in
these respects far inferior to the second); while the third of them is
found (though a fancy of the hour) to be framed upon real dialectical
principles. But dialectic is not rhetoric; nothing on that subject is to
be found in the endless treatises of rhetoric, however prolific in hard
names. When Plato has sufficiently put them to the test of ridicule he
touches, as with the point of a needle, the real error, which is the
confusion of preliminary knowledge with creative power. No attainments
will provide the speaker with genius; and the sort of attainments which
can alone be of any value are the higher philosophy and the power of
psychological analysis, which is given by dialectic, but not by the
rules of the rhetoricians.
In this latter portion of the Dialogue there are many texts which may
help us to speak and to think. The names dialectic and rhetoric are
passing out of use; we hardly examine seriously into their nature and
limits, and probably the arts both of speaking and of conversation have
been unduly neglected by us. But the mind of Socrates pierces through
the differences of times and countries into the essential nature of man;
and his words apply equally to the modern world and to the Athenians of
old. Would he not have asked of us, or rather is he not asking of us,
Whether we have ceased to prefer appearances to reality? Let us take
a survey of the professions to which he refers and try them by his
standard. Is not all literature passing into criticism, just as Athenian
literature in the age of Plato was degenerating into sophistry and
rhetoric? We can discourse and write about poems and paintings, but we
seem to have lost the gift of creating them. Can we wonder that few
of them 'come sweetly from nature,' while ten thousand reviewers (mala
murioi) are engaged in dissecting them? Young men, like Phaedrus, are
enamoured of their own literary clique and have but a feeble sympathy
with the master-minds of former ages. They recognize 'a POETICAL
necessity in the writings of their favourite author, even when he boldly
wrote off just what came in his head.' They are beginning to think that
Art is enough, just at the time when Art is about to disappear from the
world. And would not a great painter, such as Michael Angelo, or a great
poet, such as Shakespeare, returning to earth, 'courteously rebuke'
us--would he not say that we are putting 'in the place of Art the
preliminaries of Art,' confusing Art the expression of mind and truth
with Art the composition of colours and forms; and perhaps he might
more severely chastise some of us for trying to invent 'a new shudder'
instead of bringing to the birth living and healthy creations? These he
would regard as the signs of an age wanting in original power.
Turning from literature and the arts to law and politics, again we fall
under the lash of Socrates. For do we not often make 'the worse appear
the better cause;' and do not 'both parties sometimes agree to tell
lies'? Is not pleading 'an art of speaking unconnected with the truth'?
There is another text of Socrates which must not be forgotten in
relation to this subject. In the endless maze of English law is there
any 'dividing the whole into parts or reuniting the parts into a
whole'--any semblance of an organized being 'having hands and feet and
other members'? Instead of a system there is the Chaos of Anaxagoras
(omou panta chremata) and no Mind or Order. Then again in the noble
art of politics, who thinks of first principles and of true ideas?
We avowedly follow not the truth but the will of the many (compare
Republic). Is not legislation too a sort of literary effort, and might
not statesmanship be described as the 'art of enchanting' the house?
While there are some politicians who have no knowledge of the truth, but
only of what is likely to be approved by 'the many who sit in judgment,'
there are others who can give no form to their ideal, neither having
learned 'the art of persuasion,' nor having any insight into the
'characters of men.' Once more, has not medical science become a
professional routine, which many 'practise without being able to say
who were their instructors'--the application of a few drugs taken from
a book instead of a life-long study of the natures and constitutions of
human beings? Do we see as clearly as Hippocrates 'that the nature of
the body can only be understood as a whole'? (Compare Charm.) And are
not they held to be the wisest physicians who have the greatest distrust
of their art? What would Socrates think of our newspapers, of our
theology? Perhaps he would be afraid to speak of them;--the one vox
populi, the other vox Dei, he might hesitate to attack them; or he might
trace a fanciful connexion between them, and ask doubtfully, whether
they are not equally inspired? He would remark that we are always
searching for a belief and deploring our unbelief, seeming to prefer
popular opinions unverified and contradictory to unpopular truths which
are assured to us by the most certain proofs: that our preachers are
in the habit of praising God 'without regard to truth and falsehood,
attributing to Him every species of greatness and glory, saying that He
is all this and the cause of all that, in order that we may exhibit Him
as the fairest and best of all' (Symp.) without any consideration of
His real nature and character or of the laws by which He governs the
world--seeking for a 'private judgment' and not for the truth or 'God's
judgment.' What would he say of the Church, which we praise in like
manner, 'meaning ourselves,' without regard to history or experience?
Might he not ask, whether we 'care more for the truth of religion, or
for the speaker and the country from which the truth comes'? or, whether
the 'select wise' are not 'the many' after all? (Symp.) So we may fill
up the sketch of Socrates, lest, as Phaedrus says, the argument should
be too 'abstract and barren of illustrations.' (Compare Symp., Apol.,
Euthyphro.)
He next proceeds with enthusiasm to define the royal art of dialectic as
the power of dividing a whole into parts, and of uniting the parts in a
whole, and which may also be regarded (compare Soph.) as the process of
the mind talking with herself. The latter view has probably led Plato
to the paradox that speech is superior to writing, in which he may seem
also to be doing an injustice to himself. For the two cannot be fairly
compared in the manner which Plato suggests. The contrast of the living
and dead word, and the example of Socrates, which he has represented
in the form of the Dialogue, seem to have misled him. For speech and
writing have really different functions; the one is more transitory,
more diffuse, more elastic and capable of adaptation to moods and times;
the other is more permanent, more concentrated, and is uttered not to
this or that person or audience, but to all the world. In the Politicus
the paradox is carried further; the mind or will of the king is
preferred to the written law; he is supposed to be the Law personified,
the ideal made Life.
Yet in both these statements there is also contained a truth; they may
be compared with one another, and also with the other famous paradox,
that 'knowledge cannot be taught.' Socrates means to say, that what is
truly written is written in the soul, just as what is truly taught grows
up in the soul from within and is not forced upon it from without. When
planted in a congenial soil the little seed becomes a tree, and 'the
birds of the air build their nests in the branches.' There is an echo
of this in the prayer at the end of the Dialogue, 'Give me beauty in
the inward soul, and may the inward and outward man be at one.' We may
further compare the words of St. Paul, 'Written not on tables of stone,
but on fleshly tables of the heart;' and again, 'Ye are my epistles
known and read of all men.' There may be a use in writing as a
preservative against the forgetfulness of old age, but to live is higher
far, to be ourselves the book, or the epistle, the truth embodied in a
person, the Word made flesh. Something like this we may believe to have
passed before Plato's mind when he affirmed that speech was superior to
writing. So in other ages, weary of literature and criticism, of making
many books, of writing articles in reviews, some have desired to live
more closely in communion with their fellow-men, to speak heart to
heart, to speak and act only, and not to write, following the example of
Socrates and of Christ...
Some other touches of inimitable grace and art and of the deepest wisdom
may be also noted; such as the prayer or 'collect' which has just been
cited, 'Give me beauty,' etc.; or 'the great name which belongs to God
alone;' or 'the saying of wiser men than ourselves that a man of sense
should try to please not his fellow-servants, but his good and noble
masters,' like St. Paul again; or the description of the 'heavenly
originals'...
The chief criteria for determining the date of the Dialogue are (1) the
ages of Lysias and Isocrates; (2) the character of the work.
Lysias was born in the year 458; Isocrates in the year 436, about seven
years before the birth of Plato. The first of the two great rhetoricians
is described as in the zenith of his fame; the second is still young and
full of promise. Now it is argued that this must have been written in
the youth of Isocrates, when the promise was not yet fulfilled. And thus
we should have to assign the Dialogue to a year not later than 406,
when Isocrates was thirty and Plato twenty-three years of age, and while
Socrates himself was still alive.
Those who argue in this way seem not to reflect how easily Plato
can 'invent Egyptians or anything else,' and how careless he is of
historical truth or probability. Who would suspect that the wise
Critias, the virtuous Charmides, had ended their lives among the
thirty tyrants? Who would imagine that Lysias, who is here assailed
by Socrates, is the son of his old friend Cephalus? Or that Isocrates
himself is the enemy of Plato and his school? No arguments can be drawn
from the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the characters of
Plato. (Else, perhaps, it might be further argued that, judging from
their extant remains, insipid rhetoric is far more characteristic of
Isocrates than of Lysias.) But Plato makes use of names which have
often hardly any connection with the historical characters to whom they
belong. In this instance the comparative favour shown to Isocrates may
possibly be accounted for by the circumstance of his belonging to the
aristocratical, as Lysias to the democratical party.
Few persons will be inclined to suppose, in the superficial manner
of some ancient critics, that a dialogue which treats of love must
necessarily have been written in youth. As little weight can be attached
to the argument that Plato must have visited Egypt before he wrote the
story of Theuth and Thamus. For there is no real proof that he ever went
to Egypt; and even if he did, he might have known or invented Egyptian
traditions before he went there. The late date of the Phaedrus will have
to be established by other arguments than these: the maturity of the
thought, the perfection of the style, the insight, the relation to the
other Platonic Dialogues, seem to contradict the notion that it could
have been the work of a youth of twenty or twenty-three years of age.
The cosmological notion of the mind as the primum mobile, and the
admission of impulse into the immortal nature, also afford grounds for
assigning a later date. (Compare Tim., Soph., Laws.) Add to this that
the picture of Socrates, though in some lesser particulars,--e.g. his
going without sandals, his habit of remaining within the walls,
his emphatic declaration that his study is human nature,--an exact
resemblance, is in the main the Platonic and not the real Socrates. Can
we suppose 'the young man to have told such lies' about his master
while he was still alive? Moreover, when two Dialogues are so closely
connected as the Phaedrus and Symposium, there is great improbability in
supposing that one of them was written at least twenty years after the
other. The conclusion seems to be, that the Dialogue was written at
some comparatively late but unknown period of Plato's life, after he had
deserted the purely Socratic point of view, but before he had entered
on the more abstract speculations of the Sophist or the Philebus. Taking
into account the divisions of the soul, the doctrine of transmigration,
the contemplative nature of the philosophic life, and the character
of the style, we shall not be far wrong in placing the Phaedrus in the
neighbourhood of the Republic; remarking only that allowance must be
made for the poetical element in the Phaedrus, which, while falling
short of the Republic in definite philosophic results, seems to have
glimpses of a truth beyond.
Two short passages, which are unconnected with the main subject of the
Dialogue, may seem to merit a more particular notice: (1) the locus
classicus about mythology; (2) the tale of the grasshoppers.
The first passage is remarkable as showing that Plato was entirely
free from what may be termed the Euhemerism of his age. For there were
Euhemerists in Hellas long before Euhemerus. Early philosophers, like
Anaxagoras and Metrodorus, had found in Homer and mythology hidden
meanings. Plato, with a truer instinct, rejects these attractive
interpretations; he regards the inventor of them as 'unfortunate;' and
they draw a man off from the knowledge of himself. There is a latent
criticism, and also a poetical sense in Plato, which enable him to
discard them, and yet in another way to make use of poetry and mythology
as a vehicle of thought and feeling. What would he have said of the
discovery of Christian doctrines in these old Greek legends? While
acknowledging that such interpretations are 'very nice,' would he not
have remarked that they are found in all sacred literatures? They cannot
be tested by any criterion of truth, or used to establish any truth;
they add nothing to the sum of human knowledge; they are--what we
please, and if employed as 'peacemakers' between the new and old are
liable to serious misconstruction, as he elsewhere remarks (Republic).
And therefore he would have 'bid Farewell to them; the study of them
would take up too much of his time; and he has not as yet learned the
true nature of religion.' The 'sophistical' interest of Phaedrus, the
little touch about the two versions of the story, the ironical manner in
which these explanations are set aside--'the common opinion about them
is enough for me'--the allusion to the serpent Typho may be noted in
passing; also the general agreement between the tone of this speech and
the remark of Socrates which follows afterwards, 'I am a diviner, but a
poor one.'
The tale of the grasshoppers is naturally suggested by the surrounding
scene. They are also the representatives of the Athenians as children
of the soil. Under the image of the lively chirruping grasshoppers who
inform the Muses in heaven about those who honour them on earth, Plato
intends to represent an Athenian audience (tettigessin eoikotes). The
story is introduced, apparently, to mark a change of subject, and also,
like several other allusions which occur in the course of the Dialogue,
in order to preserve the scene in the recollection of the reader.
*****
No one can duly appreciate the dialogues of Plato, especially the
Phaedrus, Symposium, and portions of the Republic, who has not a
sympathy with mysticism. To the uninitiated, as he would himself
have acknowledged, they will appear to be the dreams of a poet who
is disguised as a philosopher. There is a twofold difficulty in
apprehending this aspect of the Platonic writings. First, we do not
immediately realize that under the marble exterior of Greek literature
was concealed a soul thrilling with spiritual emotion. Secondly, the
forms or figures which the Platonic philosophy assumes, are not like the
images of the prophet Isaiah, or of the Apocalypse, familiar to us in
the days of our youth. By mysticism we mean, not the extravagance of
an erring fancy, but the concentration of reason in feeling, the
enthusiastic love of the good, the true, the one, the sense of the
infinity of knowledge and of the marvel of the human faculties. When
feeding upon such thoughts the 'wing of the soul' is renewed and
gains strength; she is raised above 'the manikins of earth' and their
opinions, waiting in wonder to know, and working with reverence to find
out what God in this or in another life may reveal to her.