moved by her power ; and this composition of soul and body
is called a living and mortal creature. For no such union
can be reasonably believed, or at all proved to be other than
mortal j although fancy may imagine a god whom, not hav-
ing seen nor surely known, we invent — such a one, an im-
mortal creature having a body, and having also a soul which
have been united in all time. Let that, however, be as God
wills, and be spoken of acceptably to him. But the reason
why the soul loses her feathers should be explained, and is as
follows: —
The wing is intended to soar aloft and carry that which
gravitates downwards into the upper region, which is the
dwelling of the gods ; and this is that element of the body
which is most akin to the divine. Now the divine is beauty,
wisdom, goodness, and the like ; and by these the wing of
the soul is nourished, and grows apace ; but when fed upon
evil and foulness, and the like, wastes and falls away. Zeus,
the mighty lord holding the reins of a winged chariot,
leads the way in heaven, ordering all and caring for
all ; and there follows him the heavenly array of gods and
demi-gods, divided into eleven bands; for only Hestia^is
88 Hestia (hes'tf-a) : goddess of the hearth, corresponding to the Roman
Vesta.
PH^DRUS 155
left at home in the house of heaven ; but the rest of the
twelve greater deities march in their appointed order. And
they see in the interior of heaven many blessed sights ; and
there are ways to and fro, along which the happy gods are
passing, each one fulfilling his own work ; and any one may
follow who pleases, for jealousy has no place in the heavenly
choir. This is within the heaven. But when they go to
feast and festival, then they move right up the steep ascent,
and mount the top of the dome of heaven. Now the chariots
of the gods, self-balanced, upward glide in obedience to the
rein ; but the others have a difficulty, for the steed who has
evil in him, if he has not been properly trained by the char-
ioteer, gravitates and inclines and sinks towards the earth :
and this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict of the
soul. For the immortal souls, when they are at the end of
their course, go out and stand upon the back of heaven, and
the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they
behold the world beyond. Now of the heaven which is above
the heavens, no earthly poet has sung or ever will sing in a
worthy manner. But I must tell, for I am bound to speak
truly when speaking of the truth. The colorless and formless
and intangible essence is visible to the mind, which is' the
only lord of the soul. Circling around this in the region
above the heavens is the place of true knowledge. And as
the divine intelligence, and that of every other soul which is
rightly nourished, is fed upon mind and pure knowledge,
such an intelligent soul is glad at once more beholding being ;
and feeding on the sight of truth is replenished, until the
revolution of the worlds brings her round again to the same
place. During the revolution she beholds justice, temper-
ance, and knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation
or of relation, which men call existence, but knowledge ab-
solute in existence absolute ; and beholding other existences
in like manner, and feeding upon them, she passes down into
the interior of the heavens and returns home, and there the
charioteer putting up his horses at the stall, gives them am-
brosia to eat and nectar to drink.
This is the life of the gods ; but of other souls, that which
follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the g
charioteer into the outer world and is carried round in
the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and behold-
156 PLATO THE TEACHER
ing true being, but hardly ; another rises and falls, and sees,
and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds.
The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world
and they all follow, but not being strong enough they sink
into the gulf as they are carried round, plunging, treading on
one another, striving to be first ; and there is confusion and
the extremity of effort, and many of them are lamed or have
their wings broken through the ill driving of the charioteers ;
and all of them after a fruitless toil go away without being
initiated into the mysteries of being, and are nursed with the
food of opinion. The reason of their great desire to behold
the plain of truth is that the food which is suited to the high-
est part of the soul comes out of that meadow ; and the wing
on which the soul soars is nourished with this. And there is
a law of the goddess Retribution, that the soul which attains
any vision of truth in company with the god is preserved
from harm until the next period, and he who always attains
is always unharmed. But when she is unable to follow, and
fails to behold the vision of truth, and through some ill-hap
sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and
her feathers fall from her and she drops to earth, then the
law ordains that this soul shall in the first generation pass,
not into that of any other animal, but only of man ; and the
soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a
philosopher or artist, or musician or lover ; that which has
seen truth in the second degree shall be a righteous king or
warrior or lord ; the soul which is of the third class shall be a
politician or economist or trader j the fourth shall be a lover
of gymnastic toils or a physician ; the fifth a prophet or hiero-
phant 39 ; to the sixth a poet or imitator will be appropriate ;
to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman ; to the
eighth that of a Sophist or demagogue ; to the ninth that of a
tyrant ; all these are states of probation, in which he who
lives righteously improves, and he who lives unrighteously
deteriorates his lot.
Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul can return
to the place from whence she came, for she cannot grow her
wings in less; only the soul of a philosopher, guile-
less and true, or the soul of a lover, who is not without
philosophy, may acquire wings in the third recurring period of
"• See Protagoras, note 27.
PH^DRUS 157
a thousand years : and if they choose this life three times in
succession, then they have their wings given them, and go
away at the end of three thousand years. But the others re-
ceive judgment when they have completed their first life, and
after the judgment they go, some of them to the houses of cor-
rection which are under the earth, and are punished ; others
to some place in heaven whither they are lightly borne by
justice, and there they live in a manner worthy of the life
which they led here when in the form of men. And at the
end of the first thousand years the good souls and also the evil
souls both come to cast lots and choose their second life, and
they may take any that they like. And then the soul of the
man may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast again
into the man. But the soul of him who has never seen the
truth will not pass into the human form, for man ought to
have intelligence of universals, proceeding from many particu-
lars of sense to one conception of reason ; and this is the
recollection of those things which our soul once saw when in
company with God — when looking down from above on that
which we now call being and upwards towards the true being.
And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings ;
and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of
his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which
God abides, and in beholding which He is what he is. And
he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated
into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But,
as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the
vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him ; they do not see that
he is inspired.
Thus far I have been speaking of the fourth and last kind
of madness, which is imputed to him who, when he sees the
beauty of earth, is transported with the recollection of the true
beauty j he would like to fly away, but he cannot ; he is like
a bird fluttering and looking upward and careless of the world
below ; and he is therefore esteemed mad. And I have shown
that this is of all inspirations the noblest and best, and comes
of the best, and that he who has part or lot in this madness is
called a lover of the beautiful. For, as has been already
said, every soul of man has in the way of nature beheld
true being ; this was the condition of her passing into the form
of man. But all men do not easily recall the things of the
158 PLATO THE TEACHER
other world ; they may have seen them for a short time only,
or they may have been unfortunate when they fell to earth,
and may have lost the memory of the holy things which they
saw there, through some evil and corrupting association. Few
there are who retain the remembrance of them sufficiently ;
and they, when they behold any image of that other world,
are rapt in amazement ; but they are ignorant of what this
means, because they have no clear perceptions. For there is
no light in the earthly copies of justice or temperance or any
of the higher qualities which are precious to souls : they are
seen but through a glass dimly ; and there are few who, going
to the images, behold in them the realities, and they only with
difficulty. They might have seen beauty shining in brightness,
when, with the happy band following in the train of Zeus, as
we philosophers did, or with other gods as others did, they
saw a vision and were initiated into most blessed mysteries,
which we celebrated in our state of innocence; and having no
feeling of evils as yet to come; beholding apparitions innocent
and simple and calm and happy as in a mystery ; shining in
pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living
tom»b which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in
the body, as in an oyster -shell. Let me linger thus long over
the memory of scenes which have passed away.
But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw her there shining
in company with the celestial forms ; and coming to earth we
find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest
aperture of sense. For sight is the keenest of our bodily
senses ; though not by that is wisdom seen, for her loveliness
would have been transporting if there had been a visible image
of her, and this is true of the loveliness of the other ideas as
well. But beauty only has this portion, that she is at once
the loveliest and also the most apparent. Now he who has not
been lately initiated, or who has become corrupted, is not
easily carried out of this world to the sight of absolute beauty
in the other; he looks only at that which has the name Of
beauty in this world, and instead of being awed at the sight
of her, like a brutish beast he rushes on to enjoy. . . .
But he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the
spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed
when he sees any one having a godlike face or form, which
is the expression or imitation of divine beauty; and at first a
PH^DRUS
159
shudder runs through him, and some "misgiving" of a former
world steals over him ; then looking upon the face of his be-
loved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid
of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to
his beloved as to the image of a god.
[When the lover beholds the divine beauty of his beloved he
receives the effluence of that beauty into his own soul, and by
it the nobler and diviner part of his nature is nourished. He
is filled with joy, because the wing of his soul thus begins to
grow, and he is happy only when in the presence of his be-
loved. When the beloved is absent, and the holy effluence
is withdrawn, this growth of the soul's wing ceases, and the
lover is filled with pain and unrest. He is constrained to flee
to his beloved as to a physician.]
And this state, my dear imaginary youth, is by men called
love, and among the gods has a name which you, in your sim-
plicity, may be inclined to mock ; there are two lines in honor
of love in the Homeric Apocrypha *> in which the name occurs.
One of them is rather outrageous, and is not quite metrical ;
they are as follow : —
" Mortals call him Eros (love),
But the immortals call him Pteros (fluttering dove)
Because fluttering of wings is a necessity to him."
You may believe this or not as you like. At any rate the
loves of lovers and their causes are such as I have described.
[Now the character of the lover depends upon the god whom
he followed in the upper world, and this same character the
lover tries to cultivate in the object of his love. The follow-
ers of every god]
seek a love who is to be like their god, and when they have
found him, they themselves imitate their god, and persuade
their love to do the same, and bring him into harmony with
the form and ways of the god as far as they can ; for they
have no feelings of envy or mean enmity towards their beloved,
40 Writings falsely attributed to Homer.
l6o PLATO THE TEACHER
but they do their utmost to create in him the greatest likeness
of themselves and the god whom they honor. And the de-
sire of the lover, if effected, and the initiation of which I
speak into the mysteries of true love, is thus fair and blissful
to the beloved when he is chosen by the lover who is driven
mad by love.
And so the beloved who, like a god, has received ev-
J? = erytrue and loyal service from his lover, not in pretense
but in reality, being also himself of a nature friendly to
his admirer, if in former days he has blushed to own his passion
and turned away his lover, because his youthful companions
or others slanderously told him that he would be disgraced,
now as years advance, at the appointed age and time is led to
receive him into communion. For fate, which has ordained
that there shall be no friendship among 'the evil, has also or-
dained that there shall ever be friendship among the good.
And when he has received him into communion and intimacy,
then the beloved is amazed at the good-will of the lover ; he
recognizes that the inspired friend is worth all other friend-
ship or kinships, which have nothing of friendship in them in
comparison. . . . After this their happiness depends upon
their self-control ; if the better elements of the mind which lead
to order and philosophy prevail, then they pass their life in this
world in happiness and harmony — masters of themselves and
orderly — enslaving the vicious and emancipating the virtuous
elements ; and when the end comes, being light and ready to fly
away, they conquer in one of the three heavenly or truly Olym-
pian victories 41 ; nor can human discipline or divine inspiration
confer any greater blessing on man than this.
[If, however, they abandon philosophy and lead the lower
life of ambition, they lose the fairest reward which might have
been theirs ; and still their destiny is not an unhappy one.]
For those who have once begun the heavenward pilgrimage
may not go down again to darkness and the journey beneath
the earth, but they live in light always ; happy companions in
their pilgrimage, and when the time comes at which they re-
ceive their wings they have the same plumage because of their
love.
41 Compare 249.
PH^DRUS l6l
Thus great are the heavenly blessings which the friendship
of a lover will confer on you, my youth. Whereas the at-
tachment of the non-lover which is just a vulgar compound
of temperance and niggardly earthly ways and motives, will
breed meanness — praised by the vulgar as virtue in your
inmost soul ; will send you bowling round the earth 2 5?"
during a period of nine thousand years, and leave you
a fool in the world below. 42
And thus, dear Eros, I have made and paid my recantation,
as well as I could and as fairly as I could ; the poetical fig-
ures I was compelled to use, because Phaedrus would have
them. And now forgive the past and accept the present, and
be gracious and merciful to me, and do not deprive me of
sight or take from me the art of love, but grant that I may be
yet more esteemed in the eyes of the fair. And if Phaedrus
or I myself said anything objectionable in our first speeches,
blame Lysias, who is the father of the brat, and let us have
no more of his progeny j bid him study philosophy, like his
brother Polemarchus ; and then his lover Phaedrus will no
longer halt between two, but dedicate himself wholly to love
and philosophical discourses.
Phcedr. I say with you, Socrates, may this come true if
this be for my good. But why did you make this discourse
of yours so much finer than the other ? I wonder at that.
And I begin to be afraid that I shall lose conceit of Lysias,
even if he be willing to make another as long as yours, which
I doubt. For one of our politicians lately took to abusing
him on this very account; he would insist on calling him a
speech-writer. So that a feeling of pride may probably induce
him to give up writing.
Soc. That is an amusing notion ; but I think that you are a
little mistaken in your friend if you imagine that he is fright-
ened at every noise ; and, possibly, you think that his assail-
ant was in earnest?
Phcedr. I thought, Socrates, that he was. And you are
aware that the most powerful and considerable men among
our statesmen are ashamed of writing speeches and leaving
them in a written form because they are afraid of posterity,
and do not like to be called Sophists.
43 Compare 249.
II
l62 PLATO THE TEACHER
[Socrates replies that it is only a case of sour grapes with
the assailants of Lysias. As a matter of fact there is noth-
ing of which the great politicians are so fond as of writing
speeches. They seek to display their own wisdom and attain
immortality by the authorship of laws. A king or an orator
who does attain immortality through his laws is looked upon
by posterity as a god, and such he considers himself. Since
the politicians are really great rhetoricians, in reproaching
Lysias they would be casting a slur on their own favorite pur-
suit.]
Soc. Any one may see that there is no disgrace in the fact
of writing?
Phcedr. Certainly not.
Soc. There may however be a disgrace in writing, not well,
but badly?
Phcedr. That is true.
Soc. And what is well and what is badly, — need we ask
Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will
write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of
metre, poet or prose writer, -to teach us this?
Phcedr. Need we ? What motive has a man to live if not
for the pleasures of discourse ? Surely he would not live for
the sake of bodily pleasures, which almost always have pre-
vious pain as a condition of them, and therefore are rightly
called slavish.
Soc. There is time yet. And I can fancy that the grass-
hoppers who are still chirruping in the sun over our heads
are talking to one another and looking at us. What
would they say if they saw that we also, like the many,
are not talking but slumbering at midday, lulled by their
voices, too indolent to think ? They would have a right to
laugh at us, and might imagine that we are slaves coming to
our place of resort, who like sheep lie asleep at noon about the
fountain. But if they see us discoursing, and like Odysseus
sailing by their siren voices, 43 they may perhaps, out of respect,
give us of the gifts which they receive of the gods and give
to men.
43 See Symposium, note 35. When the Greek hero Odysseus passed the
island of the Sirens on his way home from the Trojan War, he had the ears
of his companions stopped with wax and himself bound to the mast, so that
they all sailed by in safety.
PH^EDRUS 163
Phcedr. What gifts do you mean ? I never heard of any.
Soc. A lover of music like yourself ought surely to have
heard the story of the grasshoppers, who are said to have been
human beings in an age before the Muses. And when the
Muses came and song appeared they were ravished with de-
light j and singing always, never thought of eating and drink-
ing, until at last they forgot and died. And now they live
again in the grasshoppers ; and this is the return which the
Muses make to them, — they hunger no more, neither thirst any
more, but are always singing from the moment that they are
born, and never eating or drinking ; and when they die they
go and inform the Muses in heaven who honors them on earth.
They win the love of Terpsichore 44 for the dancers by their re-
port of them ; of Erato 45 for the lovers, and of the other Muses
for those who do them honor, according to the several ways
of honoring them : of Calliope 46 the eldest Muse, and of her
who is next to her 47 for the votaries of philosophy ; for these
are the Muses who are chiefly concerned with heaven and the
ideas, divine as well as human, and they have the sweetest ut-
terance. For many reasons, then, we ought always to talk
and not to sleep at midday.
Phcedr. Let us talk.
Soc. Shall we discuss the rules of writing and speech as we
were proposing?
Phcedr. Very good. 2 *o-
[The first rule of good speaking, Socrates claims, is that
the speaker must have knowledge — he must know the truth
of the matter about which he is going to speak. This
seems doubtful at first, for rhetoric does not deal with truth
but only with the opinions of men. The art of rhetoric,
whether employed in public or private, in regard to matters
great or small, good or bad, is "a universal art of enchanting
the mind by arguments. ' ' It makes the good appear evil, the
just unjust, the like unlike, or vice versa, just as the speaker
pleases. Nevertheless, though knowledge of the truth alone
will not give one the art of persuasion, neither can that art be
44 Terpsichore (terp-sik'o-re) : the Muse who presided over choral song
and dancing.
46 Erato (er'a-t5) : the Muse who presided over love-poetry.
48 Calliope (k51-H'o-pe) : the Muse of Epic poetry and eloquence.
47 Jowett says this refers to Urania (u-ra'ni-a), the Muse of Astronomy.
1 64 PLATO THE TEACHER
separated from such knowledge. Even when the object of the
speaker is to deceive his hearers, he must depart from the truth
very gradually indeed or he will be detected. He must pre-
sent to his audience something which very nearly resembles
the truth, for error slips in through resemblances. Now in
order to know what resembles the truth, the deceiver must
know the truth itself. This knowledge of the truth also ena-
bles him to detect a deception employed against himself.
u Then he who would be a master of the art must know the
real nature of everything ; or he will never know either how
to contrive or how to escape the gradual departure from truth
into the opposite of truth which is effected by the help of re-
semblances. ' '
Socrates proposes that they use the speech of Lysias and
his own about love as illustrations of the art of rhetoric.
Lysias is first criticised for not beginning with a definition of
his subject. Love is a term as to whose meaning we are not
all agreed, and it should be defined by a speaker in the open-
ing of his discourse. Socrates began with a definition of love,
but Lysias began with what should have been the end of his
speech. Socrates' speeches are also superior to that of Lysias in
respect to arrangement. Lysias seems to have written things
down just as they came into his head without any regard to
arrangement. " Every discourse," says Socrates, "ought to
be a living creature, having its own body and head and feet ;
there ought to be a middle, beginning, and end, which are
in a manner agreeable to one another, and to the whole. ' '
Such a vital connection does not exist between the parts of
Lysias' discourse. Although the myth which Socrates related
was only the creation of fancy, it " involved two principles
which would be charming if they could be fixed by art."]
Phcedr. What are they ?
Soc. First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one
idea : the speaker defines his several notions in order that he
may make his meaning clear, as in our definition of love,
which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and con-
sistency to the discourse.
Phadr. What is the other principle, Socrates ?
Soc. Secondly, there is the faculty of division according
to the natural ideas or members, not breaking any part as a
PH^DRUS 165
bad carver might. But, as the body may be divided into a
left side and into a right side, having parts right and left,
so in the two discourses there was assumed, first of all,