form of a man, but containing under a human skin a lion and a
many-headed monster (Republic): the great beast, i.e. the populace: and
the wild beast within us, meaning the passions which are always liable
to break out: the animated comparisons of the degradation of philosophy
by the arts to the dishonoured maiden, and of the tyrant to the
parricide, who “beats his father, having first taken away his arms”:
the dog, who is your only philosopher: the grotesque and rather paltry
image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws), which is
repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias: the argument personified as
veiling her face (Republic), as engaged in a chase, as breaking upon us
in a first, second and third wave:—on these figures of speech the
changes are rung many times over. It is observable that nearly all
these parables or continuous images are found in the Republic; that
which occurs in the Theaetetus, of the midwifery of Socrates, is
perhaps the only exception. To make the list complete, the mathematical
figure of the number of the state (Republic), or the numerical interval
which separates king from tyrant, should not be forgotten.
The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of another life
which, like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences
of the mysteries. It is a vision of the rewards and punishments which
await good and bad men after death. It supposes the body to continue
and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes a
Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo
and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only. The
argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the meaning
breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and consistency
of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the chief
point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is no
possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of
foreseeing death, and brings together the souls both of them and their
judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both are exposed to
view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might prevent them from
seeing into or being seen by one another.