κράτους * ἢ εἰ μετὰ πατρὸς καθηΰδον ἢ ἀδελφοῦ πρεσβυτέ ρου.

66

Vide also Xenophon's Memorabilia, lib. iv.

"Sunt quidem inter veteres qui ei objecerunt "pulchritudine Alcibiadis inferiorem et juvenum corruptorem fuisse, qua de causa Aspasia quoque "eum versibus suis traduxit. Sed impudentissi66 mam hanc esse calumniam non solum tota vitæ "Socratis ratio loquitur, sed et Aristophanis silen"tium probat." Brucker, pars ii. lib. ii. cap. 2. p. 539.

The opinion of Wieland, a man extremely well read in the philosophers of antiquity, is of some value on such a subject: "Socrates was a vir"tuous man in the highest and completest sense "of the word; in every relation of life he was a "model for all men." Wieland's Aristippus, p.. 75. vol. i.

H.

The figurative representations in the Phædrus will be read with different feelings by different minds; images that are ridiculous and absurd in the eyes of some, will appear to others pregnant with beauty and truth, in the same manner as honey and poison may be extracted from the same flowers. It should be remembered that Plato him

× Bekker, p. 461.

self does not propose his allegories of the souly to be understood in a literal sense, but as serving to convey, through the medium of sensible images and similitudes, some notion of that spiritual essence whose real nature is unintelligible; and he has evidently attempted to explain the imperfections of the soul, in its present union with body, by a narrative of its fortunes in an earlier and uncompounded state. It is not easy to follow him in his lofty speculations, nor to overtake "the "winged chariots of the gods," which he so fancifully describes; but the general impression that remains upon the reader's mind is nearly to the following effect:

z The soul at its first creation was perfect, and winged, and sublime in its contemplations; but, unable to preserve so high a flight, it descended to earth, and its wings fell off, and perished through the evil with which it had become connected. The desire of man upon earth should be to recover these lost wings by meditations on the good, the true, and the celestiala.

ν Περὶ δὲ τῆς ἰδέας αὐτῆς ὧδε λεκτέον, οἷον μέν ἐστι, πάντῃ πάντως θείας εἶναι καὶ μακρᾶς διηγήσεως, ᾧ δὲ ἔοικεν ἀνθρωπίνης τε καὶ ἐλάττονος. Plato, Phædrus, p. 39. Bekker, pars i. vol. i.

z Phædrus, Bekker, pp. 39. 43. pars i. vol. i.

a One of the fathers of the church has the same kind of expression, teaching us that it is the business of man, " to give

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

“ 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 d; 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.