over themselves, doing all things in order, having brought into bondage that part of the Soul wherein wickedness was found, and having made that part free wherein virtue dwelleth; and after this life is ended, they rise up lightly on their wings, having gained the victory in the first of the three falls at the True Olympic Games, than which victory no greater good can the Temperance of Man or the Madness from God bestow on Man.

But if any take unto themselves a baser way of life, seeking not after true wisdom but after honour, perchance when two such are well drunken, or at any time take no heed unto themselves, their two licentious Horses, finding their Souls without watch set, and bringing them together, make choice of that which most men deem the greatest bliss, and straightway do enjoy it; and having once enjoyed it, they have commerce with it afterward alway, but sparingly, for they do that which is not approved of their entire mind.

Now these two also are friends unto one another, but in less measure than those I before spake of, because they live for a while in the bonds of love, and then for a while out of them, and think that they have given and received the greatest pledges betwixt each other, the which it is never allowed to break and come to enmity one with another. When such do end their life here and go forth from the body, they are without wings, but have a vehement desire to get wings which is no small recompense they receive for Madness of Love. Wherefore they are not compelled to go down unto the darkness and the journey under the Earth, seeing that they have already made a beginning of the heavenly journey; but they pass their time in the light of day, and journey happily together Lover and Beloved, and when they get wings, of the same feather do they get them, for their Love's sake.

These are the gifts, dear boy-behold how many they are and how divine !—which the friendship that cometh from the Lover shall bestow on thee: but the conversation of him who is no Lover, being mingled with the temperance of this mortal life, and niggardly dispensing things mortal, begetteth in the Soul of his friend that Covetousness which the multitude praise as Virtue, and causeth her hereafter to wander, devoid of understanding, round about the Earth and under the Earth, for a thousand years nine times told.

Jamn there
Ertuly,

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PHAEDRUS MYTH

I

I think it necessary, at the outset of my observations on the Phaedrus Myth, to take notice-let it be brief of the tolerant, nay sympathetic, way in which Plato speaks (256 c-E) of the eρwτin μpavía of those who are not "true lovers." He speaks eloquently of it as a bond which unites aspiring souls in the after life. He speaks of those united by this bond as getting wings of the same feather in Heaven for their love's sake. His language is as sympathetic as the language in which Dante expresses his own sympathy, and awakens ours, with a very different pair of winged lovers-Francesca and Paolo flying together like storm-driven birds in Hell.1 It is astounding that Plato should allow himself to speak in this way. The explanation offered by Thompson 2 does not enable me to abate my astonishment:-The concluding portion of the Myth, he tells us," which stands more in need of apology," ought to be considered in connection with the fact that the entire Discourse is intended as a pattern of philosophical Rhetoric, and is adapted, as all true Rhetoric must be, to the capacity of the hearer-in this case, of Phaedrus, who is somewhat of a sensualist. It is still to me astounding that Plato

even as dramatist in sympathy with the sensualism of one of his dramatis personae, the youth to whom his "Socrates addresses this Rhetorical Paradigm, if that is what the Phaedrus Myth is 3-should have ventured to speak, as he does here, of what he indeed elsewhere condemns as unequivocally as Aristotle condemns it."

The reflection, in most cases a trite one, that even the best men are apt to become tolerant of the evil which prevails in the manners of their age, is hardly, in this case, a trite reflection, for it is such an oppressively sad one.

1 Inferno, v.

2 Phaedrus, p. 163.

3 I entirely dissent from the view that this Myth is merely a pattern of philosophical Rhetoric; and also from the consequential view (Thompson's Introduction to Phaedrus, p. xix.), that it is mostly "a deliberate allegory,' unlike, it is added, other Platonic Myths in which the sign and the thing signified are blended, and sometimes confused. See infra, p. 339. Laws, viii. 841 D.

5 E. N. vii. 5. 3. 1148 b 29.

II

In passing to the Phaedrus Myth (with which the Meno Myth must be associated), we pass to a Myth in which the "Deduction of the Categories of the Understanding" occupies perhaps a more prominent place, by the side of the "Representation of ideas of Reason than has been assigned to it

even in the Timaeus.

The mythological treatment of Categories of the Understanding stands on a different footing from that of "Ideas of Reason" in this important respect, that it is not the only treatment of which these Categories are capable. The Ideas of Reason, Soul, Cosmos, and God, if represented at all, must be represented in Myth; and it is futile to attempt to extract the truth of fact, by a rationalising process, out of any representation of them, however convincing, as a representation, it may appear to our deepest instinct. On the other hand, Categories of the Understanding (e.g. the notions of Substance and of Cause), though, as a priori conditions of sensible experience, they cannot be treated as if they were data of that experience, are yet fully realised, for what they are, in that experience, and only in it. Hence, while their a_priori character may be set forth in Myth, the fact that, unlike the Ideas of Reason, they are fully realised in sensible experience, makes them also capable of logical treatment. That they are capable of such treatment is obvious, when one considers the advance, sound and great as measured by influence in the physical sciences, which (Logic has brought about in our interpretation of the Notion, or Category, of Cause, and that by discussions carried on quite apart from the question of whether the Notion is present a priory, or is of a posteriori origin. We may say, however, that treatment of Categories of the Understanding tends to become less mythological and more logical as time goes on; but yet the mythological treatment of them can never become obsoleteit still remains the legitimate expression of a natural impulse, the power of which-for evil-Kant recognises in his Transcendental Dialectic. I call the mythological expression of this impulse legitimate, because it is mythological, and not pseudo-scientific.

I take the Phaedrus Myth, along with the Meno Myth, as an example of the Mythological Deduction of Categories of the Understanding. The Eternal Forms seen by the Soul in its prenatal life, as "remembered" in this life when objects of sense present themselves, are Categories, although the list of them is redundant and defective if we look at it with Kant's eyes, which I do not think we need do.

But although the Phaedrus Myth deduces Categories, it represents Ideas as well. Plato, as I have been careful to point out, does not anywhere distinguish Categories and Ideas formally; and the Phaedrus Myth, in particular, is one of the most complex, as well as comprehensive, in the whole list of the Platonic Myths. It deduces Categories, sets forth the Ideas of Soul, Cosmos, and God, is Aetiological and Eschatological, and, though a true Myth, is very largely composed of elements which are Allegories. Its complexity and comprehensiveness are indeed so great that they have suggested the theory that of Düring,' with which, however, I cannot agree that the Myth is a Programme-a general view of a whole consistent Eschatological Doctrine, which is worked out in detail in the Gorgias, Phaedo, and Republic Myths.2 In the Phaedrus Myth alone, Düring maintains, we have a complete account of the whole History of the Soul-its condition before incarnation, the cause of its incarnation, and the stages of its life, incarnate, and disembodied, till it returns to its original disembodied state. All this, he argues, is so summarily sketched in the Phaedrus that we have to go to the other Dialogues mentioned, in order to understand some things in the Phaedrus rightly. In the Phaedrus Myth, in short, we have "eine compendiarische Darstellung einer in grösserer Ausfürlichkeit vorschwebenden Conception." The Phaedrus Myth thus dealing, for whatever reason, with everything that can be dealt with by a Myth, we shall do well not to separate its Deduction of Categories, or Doctrine of ȧváμvnois, too sharply from the other elements of the composition.

1 Die eschat. Myth. Platos, p. 476 (Archiv für Gesch. d. Philos. vi. (1893), pp. 475 ff.). 2 Cf. Jowett and Campbell's Republic, vol. iii. p. 468. The attempts of Numenius, Proclus, and others to connect the Myth of Er with those in Gorg., Phaed., Phaedr., Tim., so as to get a complete and consistent view of Plato's supra-mundane theories, only show the futility of such a method."

This Myth is part of the Discourse which Socrates delivers, by way of recantation, in praise of Love. The nonlover, indeed, is sane, but the madness of the lover is far better than the other's sanity. Madness is the source of all that is good and great in human effort. There are four kinds of it1(1) the Prophet's madness; (2) the madness of the Initiated; (3) the madness of the Poet; and (4) the madness of the True Lover who is the True Philosopher. It is the Transcendental History of the Soul as aspiring after this True Love that is the main burden of the Myth. And here let me say a few words, in passing, on the view maintained by Thompson in his Introduction to the Phaedrus (p. xix.),2 that this Myth is, for the most part, "a deliberate Allegory." With this view I cannot agree. It ignores the fact that a Myth is normally composed of elements which are Allegories. The Chariot, with the Charioteer and two Horses, is allegorical-it puts in pictorial form a result already obtained by Plato's psychological analysis, which has distinguished Reason, Spirit, and Appetite as "Parts of the Soul." But if the Chariot itself is allegorical, its Path through the Heavens is mythic. Allegory employed as rough material for Myth is frequent in the work of the Great Masters, as notably in the greatest of all Myths in the Divina Commedia. A striking instance there is the Procession, symbolic of the connection between the Old Dispensation and the New, which passes before the Poet in the Earthly Paradise (Purg. xxix. ff.). The Visions of Ezekiel, to which Dante is here indebted for some of his imagery, may also be mentioned as instances of mythological compositions built largely out of elements which are allegories. It is enthusiasm and a living faith which, indeed, inspire the mythopoeic or prophetic architect to build at all; but his creative enthusiasm is often served by a curious diligence in the elaboration of the parts.

III

I have identified the prenatal impression produced in the Soul by the Eternal Forms seen in the Super-Celestial place

1 Phaedrus, 244.

2 Alluded to supra, p. 336.