is this, that our original nature was such that we were One Whole. Love, then, is the name of our desire and pursuit of the Whole; and once, I say, we were one, but now for our wickedness God hath made us to dwell separate, even as the Arcadians who were made to dwell separate by the Lacedaemonians; and even yet are we in danger, if we are not obedient unto the Gods, to be again cut in twain, and made to go about as mere tallies, in the figure of those images which are graven in relief on tablets with their noses sawn through into halves. Wherefore let our exhortation unto every man be that he live in the fear of the gods, to the end that we may escape this, and obtain that unto which Love our Captain leadeth us. Him let no man withstand. Whoso is at enmity with the gods withstandeth him; but if we are become friends of God, and are reconciled unto him, then shall we find and meet each one of us his own True Love, which happeneth unto few in our time. Now I pray Eryximachus not to break a jest upon my discourse, as though Pausanias and Agathon were in my mind; for peradventure they too are of those I speak of, and are both by nature male: but, be that as it may, I speak concerning all men and women, and say that the state of mankind would become blessed if we all fulfilled our love, and each one of us happened upon his own True Love, and so returned unto his original nature. If this is best of all, it followeth of necessity that that which in our present life cometh nearest thereto is best-this is that each one of us should find the love which is naturally suitable to him; and the God we ought to praise for this is Love, who both at this present time bestoweth on us the greatest benefit, in that he leadeth us unto our own, and for the time to come giveth us promise of that which is best, if we render the observance to godward that is meet, to wit, the promise that he will restore us to our original nature, and heal us of our pain, and make us divinely blessed. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE MYTH TOLD BY ARISTOPHANES The Myth told by Aristophanes in the Symposium1 differs from all other Platonic Myths in being conceived in a spirit, and told in a manner, reminding one of Rabelais or Swift. It explains the sentiment of love as due to the fact that exaσTOS ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἀνθρώπου σύμβολον every human being is a tally which came about in the following way:-Primitive man was round, and had four hands and four feet, and one head with two faces looking opposite ways. He could walk on his legs if he liked, but he could also roll over and over with great speed like a tumbler; which he did when he wanted to go fast.3 There were three genders at that time, corresponding to the Sun, the parent of the masculine gender, to the Earth, the parent of the feminine gender, and to the Moon, the parent of the common gender. These round people, children of round parents, being very swift and strong, attacked Zeus and the other gods. Instead of destroying prospective worshippers with thunderbolts, Zeus adopted the plan of doubling the number of the round people by cutting each one of them in two. This not only doubled the number of his prospective worshippers, but humbled them, for they had now to walk on two legs and could not roll; and he threatened, if they gave him any further trouble, to halve them again, and make them merely bas-reliefs, and leave them to hop about on one leg.* 3 Mr A. B. Cook (Zeus, Jupiter, and the Oak, in Class. Rev. July 1904, p. 326), speaking of the Sicilian triskeles as a survival of the Cyclops as primitively conceived, -i.e. conceived as (1) three-eyed, and (2) as a disc representing the solar orb, remarks that "Plato was probably thinking of the Empedoclean ouλoøveîs TÚTO (251 K) when he spoke of Janiform beings with four arms and four legs which enabled them to revolve Kúkλw (Symp. 189 E; cf. Tim. 44 D)." 4 In Callaway's Zulu Nursery Tales, i. 198-202, the story is told of a woman who is carried away by one-legged people. When they first saw her they said: "Oh, it would be a pretty thing-but, oh, the two legs!' They said this because she had two legs and two hands; for they are like as if an ox of the white man is skinned and divided into two halves; the Amadhlungundhlebe were like one side, there not being another side.' In a note ad loc. (p. 199) Callaway refers to Pliny (H.N. vii. 2) for a nation of one-legged men-hominum genus qui monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, mirae pernicitatis ad saltum ; and to Lane's notes to the Introduction to the Arabian Nights, p. 33-"The Shikk is another demoniacal creature, having the form of half a human being, like a man divided longitudinally." Now Love is the remembrance of the original undivided state: it is the longing which one half has to be again united to its other half, so that the original Whole may be restored: every human being is a tally. 1 It is difficult to think of this story as a Platonic Myth in the ordinary sense. Does it deduce any Category, or set forth any Regulative Principle? If it does, it is only as a satirical parody of the impressive Aetiological Myth. Love is a mysterious principle, Plato seems to say; but here is a Comic History of it which may help to make it less mysterious! And yet, after all, does the circumstance that one Aetiological Myth is comic, and another is serious and impressive, constitute a real difference? We have to remember, with regard to these comic or grotesque histories, that at one end of the list of them there are some of the earliest attempts at Myth or Story-telling made by the human race, and at the other end, some of the most effective expressions of the scorn and zeal and pity of civilised man. The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel and Gulliver's Travels show us how the comic or grotesque history, as well as the solemn Myth,-Myth of Er or Purgatorio,-may set forth the Universal. The place held in such a deeply religious system as the Orphic by a savage grotesque like the story of Zagreus enables us to understand how Plato-if only in a spirit of parody could insert a story like that of the round people in a serious discussion of the nature of Love. Zagreus 2 was the son of Zeus and Persephone, and his father's darling. But Hera was jealous, and incited the They surprised him among his toys, Titans to slay the child. They surprised him " 1 Perhaps suggested by the πολλὰ μὲν ἀμφιπρόσωπα καὶ ἀμφίστερν ̓ ἐφύοντο Bovyevĥ ȧvôрóπ рwpa of Empedocles. Professor Burnet's illuminating account of the theory of " organic combinations advanced by Empedocles is full of suggestion for the reader of the Myth told by Aristophanes in the Symposium : see especially section 94 of Early Greek Philosophy. 2 For the story of Zagreus and its place in religious doctrine and practice, see Lobeck, Aglaoph. pp. 547 ff., Gardner's New Chapters in Greek History, p. 396, and Jevons' Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 355. Dr. Jevons sums up as follows: The Zagreus Myth, before Pythagoreanism affected the Orphic cult, had driven out all others, and was accepted as the orthodox explanation of the new worship, by which it was reconciled with the old customary religion. Pythagoreanism afterwards allegorised this Myth in the interest not of religion, but of a philosophical system. See also Olympiodorus ad Plat. Phaedonem, 70 c, Grote's Hist. of Greece, part i. ch. i. (vol. i. p. 17, n. 1, ed. 1862), and Miss Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Introduction, p. xi. while he was wondering at the image of his own face in a mirror, and tore him to pieces and ate him, all save his heart, which Athena brought to Zeus, who gave it to Semele, and from her Zagreus was born again as Dionysus. The Titans Zeus in anger consumed with his lightning, and out of their ashes arose Man, whose nature thus unites in its composition an evil element-the flesh of the Titans,—and a good element -the flesh of Zagreus which they had eaten. Much was made of this Myth by Orphic and NeoPlatonic interpreters. The dismemberment (diaperioμós) of (διαμελισμός) Zagreus was symbolic of the resolution of the One unto the Many; his birth again as Dionysus, of the return from the Many to the One; while the moral of all was that by ceremonial rites and ecstasy we may overcome the Titanic element in us.1 That Zagreus, the Horned Child, reрóev ẞpépos, as he is called, represented the bull which was torn to pieces and eaten in a savage rite, and that the Greek story which I have sketched was an Aetiological Myth to explain the rite, it is impossible to doubt. Out of this savage material were evolved the highly philosophical and moral results which I have indicated. This parallel I have brought in the hope of making Plato's introduction of the Round People into his Philosophy of Love more intelligible. I said that the story of the Round People, told by Aristophanes, stands alone among the Platonic Myths in being conceived in a spirit and related in a manner which remind one of Rabelais or Swift. Let me cap it from Rabelais (iv. 57-61): 2 Pantagruel went ashore in an island, which, for situation and governor, may be said not to have its fellow. When you just come into it, you find it rugged, craggy, and barren, unpleasant to the eye, painful to the feet, and almost as inaccessible as the mountain of Dauphiné, which is somewhat like a toad-stool, and was never climbed, as any can remember, by any but Doyac, who had charge of King Charles the Eighth's train of artillery. This same Doyac, with strange tools and engines, gained the mountain's top, and there he found an old ram. It puzzled many a wise head to guess how it got thither. Some said that some eagle, or great 1 See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 117 ff.; Lobeck, Aglaoph. 710 ff. horn-coot, having carried it thither while it was yet a lambkin, it had got away, and saved itself among the bushes. As for us, having with much toil and sweat overcome the difficult ways at the entrance, we found the top of the mountain so fertile, healthful, and pleasant, that I thought I was then in the true Garden of Eden, or earthly paradise, about whose situation our good theologues are in such a quandary, and keep such a pother. As for Pantagruel, he said that here was the seat of Aretéthat is as much as to say, Virtue-described by Hesiod. This, however, with submission to better judgments. The ruler of this place was one Master Gaster, the first master of arts in the world. For, if you believe that fire is the great master of arts, as Tully writes, you very much wrong him and yourself: alas, Tully never believed this. On the other side, if you fancy Mercury to be the first inventor of arts, as our ancient Druids believed of old, you are mightily beside the mark. The satirist's1 sentence that affirms Master Gaster to be the master of all arts is true. With him peacefully resided old Goody Penia, alias Poverty, the mother of the ninety-nine Muses, on whom Porus, the lord of Plenty, formerly begot Love, that noble child, the mediator of heaven and earth, as Plato affirms in Symposio. We were all obliged to pay our homage, and swear allegiance to that mighty sovereign; for he is imperious, severe, blunt, hard, uneasy, inflexible; you cannot make him believe, represent to him, or persuade him anything. He does not hear. . . . He only speaks by signs. What company soever he is in, none dispute with him for precedence or superiority. . . . He held the first place at the Council of Basle; though some will tell you that the Council was tumultuous, by the contention and ambition of many for priority. Every one is busied, and labours to serve him; and, indeed, to make amends for this, he does this good to mankind, as to invent for them all arts, machines, trades, engines, and crafts; he even instructs brutes in arts which are against their nature, making poets of ravens, jackdaws, chattering jays, parrots, and starlings, and poetesses of magpies, teaching them to utter human language, speak, and sing. . . . At the court of that great master of ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two sorts of troublesome and too officious apparitors, whom he very much detested. called Engastrimythes; the others Gastrolaters. were soothsayers, enchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and seemed not to speak and give answers from the mouth, but from the belly. . . . In the holy decrees, 26, qu. 3, they are styled 1 Persius, Prologus Magister artis, ingenique largitor The first were . . The first ... |