Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3Grote, George
Philosophy
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3
Grote, George
Philosophy, Ancient; Plato; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
Plato then illustrates, by a highly poetical and imaginative
mythe, the growth and working of love in the soul. All soul or
mind is essentially self-moving, and the cause of motion to other
things. It is therefore immortal, without beginning or end: the
universal or cosmic soul, as well as the individual souls of Gods
and men.[31] Each soul may be compared to a chariot with a winged
pair of horses. In the divine soul, both the horses are excellent,
with perfect wings: in the human soul, one only of them is good,
the other is violent and rebellious, often disobedient to the
charioteer, and with feeble or half-grown wings.[32] The Gods, by
means of their wings, are enabled to ascend up to the summit of
the celestial firmament--to place themselves upon the outer
circumference or back of the heaven--and thus to be carried round
along with the rotation of the celestial sphere round the Earth.
In the course of this rotation they contemplate the pure essences
and Ideas, truth and reality without either form or figure or
colour: they enjoy the vision of the Absolute--Justice,
Temperance, Beauty, Science. The human souls, with their defective
wings, try to accompany the Gods; some attaching themselves to one
God, some to another, in this ascent. But many of them fail in the
object, being thrown back upon earth in consequence of their
defective equipment, and the unruly character of one of the
horses: some however succeed partially, obtaining glimpses of
Truth and of the general Ideas, though in a manner transient and
incomplete.
[Footnote 31: Plato, Phædrus, pp. 245-246. Compare Krische, De
Platonis Phædro, pp. 49-50 (Göttingen, 1848).
Plato himself calls this panegyric in the mouth of Sokrates a
[Greek: muthiko/s tis u(/mnos] (Phædr. p. 265 D).]
[Footnote 32: The reader will recollect Homer, Iliad, xvi. 152,
where the chariot and horses of Patroklus are described, when he
is about to attack the Trojans; the mortal horse Pedasus is
harnessed to it alongside of the two immortal horses Xanthus and
Balius.]
[Side-note: Operation of such pre-natal experience upon the
Intellectual faculties of man--Comparison and combination of
particular sensations indispensable--Reminiscence.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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