The soul is like a winged chariot, borne along by two steeds, and guided by a charioteer. The steeds of the celestial intelligences, deities of a higher nature than man, are both good, and directed by the supreme Charioteer, who arranges the order and beauty of all things; the car passes lightly forward in its course. Each intelligence performs its appointed work, enjoys the contemplation of truth, and visits regions of happiness. But the steeds in the winged chariot, destined to become man's soul, are one good, the other bad; they urge it forward (like our desires now b) in different directions, the one elevating it to heaven, the other depressing it to earth, and often refuse the guidance of the Charioteer.

I.

The poetic colouring with which Plato adorns his sentiments is frequently considered a proof of his insincerity. No one can deny that his mind was essentially poetical, that in the highest sense of the word he was a poet; for his constant aspiration is after some nobler and purer life than any this earth can supply. The warmth of his genius pervades and elevates every subject which he

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wings to the soul,” καὶ ἅρπασαι κόσμου καὶ δοῦναι θεῷ. Vid. Leighton's Works, vol. iv. p. 205.

b like our desires now] This application is not made by Plato.

touches, and imparts an energy and beauty to his descriptions which no poet ever surpassed. But is the sentiment less true because it is strongly coloured? The ornament may be fiction, but the feeling itself, and the foundation of the feeling, is truth; and the voice of nature speaks more commonly its real belief in metaphor and allusion, than in measured and artificial language. Those elevated descriptions of the future world, the radiant visions which he creates in order to embody his glowing anticipations of happiness to come, prove only the intenseness of the feelings with which he cherished this hope of immortality. Hence his imaginary paradise, with its purple and golden atmosphere of inconceivable brilliancy and clearness, in which all the rocks are of jasper and emerald; and his assertions, that the trees and flowers, which nature pours forth in such profu

c Aristotle observes, in his Rhetoric, lib. iii. 7, that poetical expressions are natural to men under the influence of emotion, ἁρμόττει λέγοντι παθητικῶς. If the truth of this precept had been kept in mind, Shakspeare would not have been so often censured for putting metaphors and images into the mouths of his characters when strongly excited.

d Vid. Phædo, pp. 112-120; also Republic, book x. pp. 502-516. The prophet Isaiah predicts the future glory of Jerusalem in images equally bold: Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles. Isaiah liv. 11, 12.

sion for man's gratification on earth, are but faint shadows of those trees and flowers and unfading archetypes of beauty, which yield fruit and fra grance in some better part of the universe. If he declare that in a retreat like this the souls of the virtuous will enjoy in another state of being, not the sensuality of Mahomet's paradise, but that perfect felicity which will result from the perception of substantial truth; is he to be considered at once as a man who disbelieved entirely in personal consciousness after death, and consequently in all recompense of the good? If, again, he describe the dark and tumultuous waves of Cocytus as destined to bear the wicked in their bosom round the vast circle of the universe, rolling on and tossing them unceasingly, and resounding in their ears through all the ages of eternity; is he to be regarded as one who in his heart believed that the retribution of the wicked in every sense of the word was a fable, an ingenious contrivance of the legislator to curb the passions of mankind? His conceptions of paradise were probably derived from traditions respecting the garden of Eden, from which our first parents were excluded, and which, in the oriental imagery of the book of Jobe, appears to be alluded to as the place whose stones are sapphires, and

e Job xxviii. 5. 6. Mr. Peters on the book of Job, p. 397. Eusebius Præp. Evangel. lib. xi. c. 36. 37. 38.

whose dust is gold: and his representations of the punishment reserved for the incurably wicked might have arisen from traditions respecting that universal deluge in which the whole guilty race of man once perished.

K.

Aristotle's treatise de Anima is extremely perplexed and obscure 5. It is not so much a metaphysical as a physical work, the discussions concerning mind are principally confined to its operations while in connection with body; and those who expect to find in it any opinions stated positively as to the destination of the human soul in another life will be entirely disappointed". Aware himself of the nature of the subject, the philosopher observes, at the very commencement, that it is of all things most difficult to obtain clear and satisfactory evidence i.

In defining soul in general to be a habit constituting the essential perfection of a natural body,

f Mr. Peters, pp. 359. 360. 371. 372.

8 Οὔτε φυσικὴ ἁπλὼς οὔτε μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ ἡ περὶ ψυχῆς θεωρία. Simplicii Prooemium de Anima Aristot. p. 1.

* Οὐδένα φαίνεται περὶ τῆς τῶν οὐρανίων ψυχῆς ποιουμένος λόγον. Idem, p. 1. Prooemium.

i Πάντη δὲ καὶ πάντως ἐστὶ τῶν χαλεπωτάτων λαβεῖν τινα πίστιν Tepi auris. De Anima, lib. i. cap. 1.

k 'Evteλéxeiα πρúτy owμatos púoskov. Lib. ii. cap. 1. The word ENTEAEXEIA is translated by Cicero, Tusc. Quæst. lib. i. c. 10.

it would appear at first sight that he considered its existence as inseparable from that of the body which it animates. But in the third book, in which the vous, or intelligence of the soul is discussed, and which is divided into active and passive, the power of actively exercising its functions by thinking and reasoning, and the capacity of receiving ideas, Aristotle assigns immortality to this intelligence, but denies it memory. It has been disputed whether he meant the whole of intelligence to be immortal, or merely the active power. The latter opinion is maintained by Warburton, by Tennemann in his History of Philosophy', and has

be se

continuata motio: it is frequently used in the sense of actus as opposed to ev dvváμe: the translation I have given will comprehend the other senses : Ἔστι δὲ ἡ μὲν ὕλη δυνάμις, τὸ δὲ ΕΙΔΟΣ évteλéxea: it is what constitutes the form or essence of a thing. Vid. Origen. Celebres Opiniones de Anima, p. 628. ed. 1618. Simplicii Prooemium, p. 2. Towards the end of the first chapter it is observed, that some of the functions of soul may parated from the body because they are not operations essentially perfecting any parts of the body: Οὐ μὴν ἀλλ ̓ ἔνιά γε οὐθὲν κωλύει διὰ τὸ μηθενὸς εἶναι σώματος ἐντελεχείας: thus, though the sight of the eye cannot be separated from the bodily eye, the speculative energy of the soul may be separated from body: περὶ δὲ τοῦ νοῦ καὶ τῆς θεωρητικῆς δυνάμεως οὐδέπω φανερὸν, ἀλλ ̓ ἔοικε ψυχῆς γένος ἕτερον εἶναι καὶ τοῦτο μόνον ἐνδέχεται ΧΩΡΙΖΕΣΘΑΙ καθά περ Tò àïdiov Toũ plaρrov. Aristot. de Anima, lib. ii. cap. 2.

1 Tennemann's Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, art. Aristotle. Lancaster's Harmony of the Law and the Gospel, p. 431.