Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 08 - Phaedrus - Plato
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- Section eight. And so the beloved, who like a god, has receiv'd every true and loyal service from his lover, not in pretense but in reality, being also himself of a nature friendly to his admirer. If in former days he has blush'd to own his passion and turn'd away from his lover because his youthful companions or others slanderously told him that he would be disgraced. Now, as years advance, at the appointed age and time is led to receive him into communion. For fate, which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil, has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the good and the beloved. When he has received him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the good will of the lover. He recognizes that the inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen. They have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. And when this feeling continues, and he is nearer to him and embraces him in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of that stream which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named desire overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some, when he is filled, flows out again. And as a breeze or an echo, rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came. So does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes, which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one, there, arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering them and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love. And thus he laughs, but he knows not what he does not understand, and cannot explain his own state. He appears to have caught the infection of blindness from another. The lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this. When he is with the lover, both cease from their pain. But when he is away, then he longs as he is longed for, and has love's image, love for love, and terrous lodging in his breast, which he calls and believes to be not love but friendship only. And his desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker. He wants to see him, touch him, kiss him, embrace him, and probably not long afterwards, his desire is accomplished. When they meet, the wanton steed of the lover has a word to say to the charioteer. He would like to have a little pleasure in return for many pains. But the wanton steed of the beloved says not a word, for he is bursting with passion which he understands not. He throws his arms round the lover and embraces him as his dearest friend. And when they are side by side, he is not in a state in which he can refuse the lover anything if he ask him, although his fellow steed and the charioteer oppose him with the arguments of shame and reason. After this, their happiness depends upon their self control. If the better elements of the mind, which lead to order and philosophy, prevail, then they pass their life here in happiness and harmony, masters of themselves and orderly, enslaving the vicious and emancipating the virtuous elements of the soul. And when the end comes, they are light and winged for flight, having conquered in one of the three heavenly or truly Olympian victories. Nor can human discipline or divine inspiration confer any greater blessing on man than this. If, on the other hand, they leave philosophy and lead the lower life of ambition, then probably halfter whine or in some other careless hour, the two wanton animals take the two souls when of their God, and bring them together, and they accomplish the desire of their hearts, which to the many is bliss. And this, having once enjoy'd, they continue to enjoy, yet rarely, because they have not the approval of the whole soul. They too are dear, but not so dear to one another as the others, either at the time of their love or afterwards. They consider that they have given and taken from each other the most sacred pledges, and they may not break them and fall into enmity. At last, they pass out of the body, unwinged but eager to soar, and thus obtain no mean reward of love and madness. For those who have once begun the heavenward pilgrimage may not go down again to darkness and the journey beneath the earth, but they live in light, always happy companions in their pilgrimage, and when the time comes at which they receive their wings, they have the same plumage because of their love. Thus great are the heavenly blessings which the friendship of a lover will confer upon you, my youth. Whereas the attachment of the non lover, which is alloyed with a worldly prudence and has worldly and niggardly ways of doling out benefits, will breed in your soul those vulgar qualities which the populace applaud will send you bowling round the earth during a period of nine thousand years, and leave you a fool in the world below. And thus, dear Eeros, I have made and paid my recantation as well and as fairly as I could, more, especially in the matter of the poetical figures which I was compelled to use, becaus Phidrous would have them. And now forgive the past and accept the present, and be gracious and merciful to me, And do not in thine anger deprive me of sight or take from me the art of love which thou hast given me, but grant that I may be yet more esteemed in the eyes of the fair And if Pidrus or myself said anything rude in our first speeches, blame Melusias, who is the father of the brat, and let us have no more of his progeny. Bid him study philosophy like his brother Polymarchus, and then his lover Phidrus, will no longer halt between two opinions, but will dedicate himself wholly to love and to philosophical discourses. I join in the prayer Socrates, and say with you, if this be for my good, may your words come to pass. But why did you make your second oration so much finer than the first? I wonder why? And I begin to be afraid that I shall lose conceit of Lucias, and that he will appear tame in comparison, even if he be willing to put another as fine and as long as yours into the field, which I doubt. For quite lately one of your politicians was abusing him on this very account, and called him a speech writer again and again, so that a feeling of pride may probably induce him to give up writing speeches. Humh, what a very amusing notion. But I think, my young man, that you are much mistaken in your friend if you imagine that he is frightened at a little noise, and possibly you think that his assailant was in earnest I thought Socrates that he was. And you are aware that the greatest and most influential statesman are ashamed of writing speech and leaving them in a written form, lest they should be called sophists by posterity. You seem to be unconscious, Vitress, that the sweet elbow of the proverb is really the long arm of the nile translator's footnote. A proverb like the grapes are sour, applied to pleasures which cannot be had, meaning sweet things, which, like the elbow, are out of the reach of the mouth. The promised pleasure turns out to be a long and tedious affair. And you appear to be equally unaware of the fact that this sweet elbow of theirs is also a long arm. For there is nothing of which our great politicians are so fond as of writing speeches and bequeathing them to posterity. And they add their admirer's names at the top of the writing out of gratitude to them. What do you mean, I do not understand? Why do you not know that when a politician writes, he begins with the names of his approverers. How so why he begins in this manner? Be it enacted by the Senate, the people, or both on the motion of a certain person who is our author? And so, putting on a serious face, he proceeds to display his own wisdom to his admirers in what is often a long and tedious composition. Now, what is that sort of thing but a regular piece of author the ship true? And if the law is finally approv'd, then the author leaves the theater in high delight. But if the law is rejected, and he is done out of his speech making and not thought good enough to write, then he and his party are in mourning. Very true, So far are they from despising or rather so highly do they value the practice of writing? No doubt? And when the king or orator has the power as Lycurgus or Solon or Darrius had of attaining an immortality or authorship in a state, is he not thought by posterity when they see his compositions? And does he not think himself, while he is yet alive, to be a god? Very true? Then do you think that any one of this class, however, ill disposed, would reproach Lucias with being an author, not upon your view, for according to you, he would be casting a slur on his own favorite pursuit. M any one may see that there is no disgrace in the mere fact of writing, certainly not. The disgrace begins when a man writes not well but badly, clearly, and what is well and what is badly? Need we ask Lucias or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write, either a political or any other work in meter or out of meter, poet or prose writer, to teach us this need we for what should a man live if not for the pleasures of discourse? Surely not for the sake of bodily pleasures, which almost always have previous pain as a condition of them, and therefore are rightly called slavish. There is time enough, And I believe that the grasshoppers, chirruping after their manner, in the heat of the sun over our heads, are talking to one another and looking down at us. What would they say if they saw that, we, like the many, are not conversing but slumbering at mid day, lulled by their voices, too indolent to think, would they not have the right to laugh at us? They might imagine that we were slaves who coming to rest at a place of resort of theirs, like sheep lie asleep at noon around the well. But if they see us discoursing and like Odysseus, sailing past them, deaf to their siren voices, they may, perhaps, out of respect, give us of the gifts which they receive from the gods, that they may impart them to men. What gifts do you mean? I never heard of any a lover of music like yourself. Ought surely to have heard the story of the grasshoppers, who are said to have been human beings in an age before the muses. And when the Muses came and song appear'd, they were ravished with delight and singing, always never thought of eating and drinking, until at last, in their forgetfulness they died. And now they live again in the grasshoppers. And this is the return which the Muses make to them. They neither hunger nor thirst, but from the hour of their birth are always singing and never eating or drinking. And when they die they go and inform the muses in Heaven who honors them on earth. They win the love of Tetsikore for the dancers by their report of them, of Erato for the lovers, and of the other muses for those who do them honor according to the several ways of honoring them, of Calliope, the eldest muse, and of Urania, who is next to her, or the philosophers, of whose music the grasshoppers make report to them. For these are the muses who are chiefly concern'd with heaven, and thought divine as well as human, and they have the sweetest utterance. For many reasons, then we ought always to talk and not to sleep at mid day. Let us talk. End of Section eight.