Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — Plato — John Shaqi
Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
Plato · en
(V. i. 7.)
In Plato, on the other hand, justice is the same thing as temperance, an
inward state of the soul and the condition of any virtue. “But,” says
Socrates, “in reality justice was such as we were describing, being
concerned however not with the outward man, but with the inward, which
is the true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not
permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or
any of them to do the work of others,—he sets in order his own inner
life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself;
and when he has bound together the three principles within him ... and
is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly
adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act ... always thinking and calling
that which preserves and cöoperates with this harmonious condition, just
and good action, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and
that which at any time impairs this condition, he will call unjust
action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance.” (“Republic,”
IV. 443.) Spenser did not attempt to incorporate this idea into his
notion of justice; he had already exhausted it in his second book, in
his explanation of temperance. Nothing was left for him to do but to
shift his mind from a conception of virtue as one, to an inferior notion
of virtue as a manifold of personal graces. But in thus changing his
idea, he destroyed the unity of his work. In his first two books he had
explained how the soul could perfect itself in the full scope of its
powers; and in doing this he had taught the Platonic doctrines of a
heavenly beauty and of temperance as the condition of virtue in the
soul. Here lay the basic idea of his conception of a gentleman.
“But vertue’s seat is deepe within the mynd,
And not in outward shows, but inward thoughts defynd.”
(VI., Introd., stz. 5.)
This idea, however, is not felt as the informing spirit of his books on
courtesy and on friendship, but appears only in scattered reflections.
In the later books the inferior conception of virtue is the controlling
idea, and Spenser has failed to harmonize it with his earlier and finer
one.
III. CHASTITY