cobblers, and he is ever saying the same things in the same words; but one who lifts the mask and looks within will find that no other words have meaning.” Alcibiades ends by warning his companions against the wiles of Socrates.
Some raillery follows, and they are invaded by another band of revellers, who compel them to drink still more deeply. The soberly inclined (led by Eryximachus) slink off, and Aristodemus, the reporter of the scene, only remembers further that when he awoke at cock-crow Socrates was still conversing with Agathon and Aristophanes, and showing them that tragedy and comedy were essentially one. He talked them both asleep, and at daybreak went about his usual business.
The philosopher of the Symposium is in the world and yet not of it, apparently yielding but really overcoming. In the Phaedo the soul was exhorted to “live upon her servant's loss,” as in Shakespeare's most religious sonnet; this dialogue tells of a “soul within sense” in the spirit of some more recent poetry. By force of imagination rather than of reason, the reconciliation of becoming (γένεσις) with being (οὐσία), of the temporal with the eternal, is anticipated. But through the bright haze of fancy and behind the mask of irony, Socrates still appears the same strong, pure, upright and beneficent human being as in the Apology, Crito and Phaedo.
The impassioned contemplation of the beautiful is again imagined as the beginning of philosophy. But the “limitless ocean of beauty” Phaedrus. is replaced by a world of supramundane forms, beheld by unembodied souls, and remembered here on earth through enthusiasm, proceeding by dialectic from multiform impressions to one rational conception, and distinguishing the “lines and veins” of truth. The Phaedrus records Plato's highest “hour of insight,” when he willed the various tasks hereafter to be fulfilled. In it he soars to a pitch of contemplation from whence he takes a comprehensive and keen-eyed survey of the country to be explored, marking off the blind alleys and paths that lead astray, laying down the main roads and chief branches, and taking note of the erroneous wanderings of others. Reversing the vulgar adage, he flies that he may walk.
The transcendent aspiration of the Phaedo and the mystic glow of the Symposium are here combined with the notion of a scientific process. No longer asking, as in the Protagoras, Is virtue one or many? Plato rises to the conception of a scientific one and many, to be contemplated through dialectic—no barren abstraction, but a method of classification according to nature. This method is to be applied especially to psychology, not merely with a speculative, but also with a practical aim. For the “birth in beauty” of the Symposium is here developed into an art of education, of which the true rhetoric is but the means, and true statesmanship an accidental outcome.
Like all imaginative critics, Plato falls to some extent under the influence of that which he criticizes. The art of rhetoric which he so often travestied had a lasting effect upon his style. Readers of his latest works are often reminded of the mock grandiloquence of the Phaedrus. But in this dialogue the poetical side of his genius is at the height. Not only can he express or imitate anything, and produce any effect at will, but he is standing behind his creation and disposing it with the most perfect mastery, preserving unity amidst profuse variety, and giving harmony to a wildness bordering on the grotesque.
The person of Socrates is here deliberately modified. He no longer (as in the Symposium) teaches positive wisdom under the pretence of repeating what he has heard, but is himself caught by an exceptional inspiration, which is accounted for by the unusual circumstance of his finding himself in the country and alone with Phaedrus. He has been hitherto a stranger to the woods and fields, which would tempt him away from studying himself through intercourse with men. But by the promise of discourse—especially of talk with Phaedrus—he may be drawn anywhither.
Phaedrus has been charmed by a discourse of Lysias, which after some coy excuses he consents to read.
It is a frigid erotic diatribe, in which one not in love pleads for preference over the lover. Socrates hints at criticism, and is challenged to produce something better on the same theme.
1. Distinguishing desire from true opinion, he defines love as desire prevailing against truth, and then expatiates on the harmful tendencies of love as so defined. But he becomes alarmed at his own unwonted eloquence, and is about to remove, when the “divine token” warns him that he must first recite a “palinode” in praise of love. For no divine power can be the cause of evil.
2. Love is madness; but there is a noble madness, as is shown by soothsayers (called μάντεις from μαίνομαι). And of the higher madness there are four kinds.
To explain this it is necessary to understand psychology. The soul is self-existent and self-moving, and therefore eternal. And her form is like a pair of winged steeds with their charioteer. In divine souls both steeds are good, but in human souls one of them is bad. Now before entering the body the soul lost her wings, which in her unembodied state were nourished by beauty, wisdom, goodness, and all that is divine. For at the festival of souls, in which they visit the heaven that is above the heavens, the unruly steed caused the charioteer to see imperfectly. So the soul cast her feathers and fell down and passed into the human form. And, according to the comparative clearness or dimness of that first vision, her earthly lot is varied from that of a philosopher or artist down through nine grades (including woman) to that of a tyrant. On her conduct in this state of probation depends her condition when again born into the world. And only in ten thousand years can she return to her pristine state, except through a life of philosophy (cf. Phaedo) or of pure and noble love (cf. Symposium).
The mind of the philosopher alone has wings. He is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries, and his soul alone becomes complete. But the vulgar deem him mad and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired.
This divine madness (the fourth kind of those above mentioned) is kindled through the renewed vision of beauty. For wisdom is not seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if she had a visible form. The struggle of the higher passion with the lower is then described with extraordinary vividness, under the image of the two steeds. When the higher impulse triumphs the issue is a philosophic friendship, at once passionate and absolutely pure.
3. From his “palinode” Socrates returns to Lysias, who is advised to leave speech-writing for philosophy.
a. Phaedrus remarks that the speech-writer is despised by the politician. Socrates replies that speech-writing and politics are one concern. The real difference is between those who base their teaching on philosophy and those who are content with rules of art. For example, if the first speech of Socrates is compared with that of Lysias, the one is found to distinguish and define, the other not; the one observes order in discourse, the other “begins where he should end,” and his utterance is like a disordered chain. A speech should be an organic whole, a “creature having hands and feet.” So in the “palinode” there was a classification of the kinds of madness, which led the way to “a possibly true though partly erring myth.” This approximation to truth in the midst of much that was playful was due to the observance of two principles, generalization and division (συναγωγή, διαίρεσις). Whoever sees the one and many in nature, him Socrates follows and walks in his footsteps, as if he were a god. In comparison of dialectic, as thus conceived, the frigid rules of Lysias, Thrasymachus, Theodorus, Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, Polus and Protagoras are futile and absurd.
b. Another condition of teaching (or true rhetoric) is the science of mind. Whether the soul be one or many, complex or multiform, and if multiform what are its parts and kinds, are questions which the teacher must have already solved. And he must likewise have classified all arguments and know them in their various applicability to divers souls. An art of speaking that should fulfil this condition is non-existent. Yet how can even verisimilitude be attained without knowledge of truth?
c. The art of writing is kindred to the art of speech. But Socrates maintains that oral teaching through the living contact of mind with mind has many advantages over written composition, which is, comparatively speaking, a dead thing. Men may write for amusement or to record the intercourse that has been. But the serious occupation of the true thinker and teacher is the communication of truth through vital converse with others like-minded—the creation of “thoughts that breathe” in spirits conscious of their value.
In conclusion, a friendly hint is given to Isocrates that he may do better than Lysias if he will but turn his attention to philosophy.
The Phaedrus anticipates much that Plato afterwards slowly elaborated, and retains some things which he at last eliminated. (1) The presence of movement or impulse in the highest region is an aspect of truth which reappears in the Sophistes and other later dialogues. It has been thought strange that it should be found so early as in the Phaedrus. But does not this remark imply an unwarrantable assumption, viz. that Plato's idealism took its departure from the being of Parmenides? Is it not rather the fact that his own theory was formulated before the Megarian ascendancy led him to examine the Eleatic doctrine, and that it was by a tendency from the first inherent in Platonism that that doctrine was modified in his final teaching? (2) The
