Phaedrus

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This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

PHAEDRUS

by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.

The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, and may be regarded
either as introducing or following it. The two Dialogues together contain
the whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love, which in the Republic
and in the later writings of Plato is only introduced playfully or as a
figure of speech. But in the Phaedrus and Symposium love and philosophy
join hands, and one is an aspect of the other. The spiritual and emotional
part is elevated into the ideal, to which in the Symposium mankind are
described as looking forward, and which in the Phaedrus, as well as in the
Phaedo, they are seeking to recover from a former state of existence.
Whether the subject of the Dialogue is love or rhetoric, or the union of
the two, or the relation of philosophy to love and to art in general, and
to the human soul, will be hereafter considered. And perhaps we may arrive
at some conclusion such as the following--that the dialogue is not strictly
confined to a single subject, but passes from one to another with the
natural freedom of conversation.

Phaedrus has been spending the morning with Lysias, the celebrated
rhetorician, and is going to refresh himself by taking a walk outside the
wall, when he is met by Socrates, who professes that he will not leave him
until he has delivered up the speech with which Lysias has regaled him, and
which he is carrying about in his mind, or more probably in a book hidden
under his cloak, and is intending to study as he walks. The imputation is
not denied, and the two agree to direct their steps out of the public way
along the stream of the Ilissus towards a plane-tree which is seen in the
distance. There, lying down amidst pleasant sounds and scents, they will
read the speech of Lysias. The country is a novelty to Socrates, who never
goes out of the town; and hence he is full of admiration for the beauties
of nature, which he seems to be drinking in for the first time.

As they are on their way, Phaedrus asks the opinion of Socrates respecting
the local tradition of Boreas and Oreithyia. Socrates, after a satirical
allusion to the 'rationalizers' of his day, replies that he has no time for
these 'nice' interpretations of mythology, and he pities anyone who has.
When you once begin there is no end of them, and they spring from an
uncritical philosophy after all. 'The proper study of mankind is man;' and
he is a far more complex and wonderful being than the serpent Typho.
Socrates as yet does not know himself; and why should he care to know about
unearthly monsters? Engaged in such conversation, they arrive at the
plane-tree; when they have found a convenient resting-place, Phaedrus pulls
out the speech and reads:--

The speech consists of a foolish paradox which is to the effect that the
non-lover ought to be accepted rather than the lover--because he is more
rational, more agreeable, more enduring, less suspicious, less hurtful,
less boastful, less engrossing, and because there are more of them, and for
a great many other reasons which are equally unmeaning. Phaedrus is
captivated with the beauty of the periods, and wants to make Socrates say
that nothing was or ever could be written better. Socrates does not think
much of the matter, but then he has only attended to the form, and in that
he has detected several repetitions and other marks of haste. He cannot
agree with Phaedrus in the extreme value which he sets upon this
performance, because he is afraid of doing injustice to Anacreon and Sappho
and other great writers, and is almost inclined to think that he himself,
or rather some power residing within him, could make a speech better than
that of Lysias on the same theme, and also different from his, if he may be
allowed the use of a few commonplaces which all speakers must equally
employ.

Phaedrus is delighted at the prospect of having another speech, and
promises that he will set up a golden statue of Socrates at Delphi, if he
keeps his word. Some raillery ensues, and at length Socrates, conquered by
the threat that he shall never again hear a speech of Lysias unless he
fulfils his promise, veils his face and begins.

First, invoking the Muses and assuming ironically the person of the non-
lover (who is a lover all the same), he will enquire into the nature and
power of love. For this is a necessary preliminary to the other question--
How is the non-lover to be distinguished from the lover? In all of us
there are two principles--a better and a worse--reason and desire, which
are generally at war with one another; and the victory of the rational is
called temperance, and the victory of the irrational intemperance or
excess. The latter takes many forms and has many bad names--gluttony,
drunkenness, and the like. But of all the irrational desires or excesses
the greatest is that which is led away by desires of a kindred nature to
the enjoyment of personal beauty. And this is the master power of love.

Here Socrates fancies that he detects in himself an unusual flow of
eloquence--this newly-found gift he can only attribute to the inspiration
of the place, which appears to be dedicated to the nymphs. Starting again
from the philosophical basis which has been laid down, he proceeds to show
how many advantages the non-lover has over the lover. The one encourages
softness and effeminacy and exclusiveness; he cannot endure any superiority
in his beloved; he will train him in luxury, he will keep him out of
society, he will deprive him of parents, friends, money, knowledge, and of
every other good, that he may have him all to himself. Then again his ways
are not ways of pleasantness; he is mighty disagreeable; 'crabbed age and
youth cannot live together.' At every hour of the night and day he is
intruding upon him; there is the same old withered face and the remainder
to match--and he is always repeating, in season or out of season, the
praises or dispraises of his beloved, which are bad enough when he is
sober, and published all over the world when he is drunk. At length his
love ceases; he is converted into an enemy, and the spectacle may be seen
of the lover running away from the beloved, who pursues him with vain
reproaches, and demands his reward which the other refuses to pay. Too
late the beloved learns, after all his pains and disagreeables, that 'As
wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.' (Compare Char.) Here is
the end; the 'other' or 'non-lover' part of the speech had better be
understood, for if in the censure of the lover Socrates has broken out in
verse, what will he not do in his praise of the non-lover? He has said his
say and is preparing to go away.

Phaedrus begs him to remain, at any rate until the heat of noon has passed;
he would like to have a little more conversation before they go. Socrates,
who has risen, recognizes the oracular sign which forbids him to depart
until he has done penance. His conscious has been awakened, and like
Stesichorus when he had reviled the lovely Helen he will sing a palinode
for having blasphemed the majesty of love. His palinode takes the form of
a myth.

Socrates begins his tale with a glorification of madness, which he divides
into four kinds: first, there is the art of divination or prophecy--this,
in a vein similar to that pervading the Cratylus and Io, he connects with
madness by an etymological explanation (mantike, manike--compare
oionoistike, oionistike, ''tis all one reckoning, save the phrase is a
little variations'); secondly, there is the art of purification by
mysteries; thirdly, poetry or the inspiration of the Muses (compare Ion),
without which no man can enter their temple. All this shows that madness
is one of heaven's blessings, and may sometimes be a great deal better than
sense. There is also a fourth kind of madness--that of love--which cannot
be explained without enquiring into the nature of the soul.

All soul is immortal, for she is the source of all motion both in herself
and in others. Her form may be described in a figure as a composite nature
made up of a charioteer and a pair of winged steeds. The steeds of the
gods are immortal, but ours are one mortal and the other immortal. The
immortal soul soars upwards into the heavens, but the mortal drops her
plumes and settles upon the earth.

Now the use of the wing is to rise and carry the downward element into the
upper world--there to behold beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the other things
of God by which the soul is nourished. On a certain day Zeus the lord of
heaven goes forth in a winged chariot; and an array of gods and demi-gods
and of human souls in their train, follows him. There are glorious and
blessed sights in the interior of heaven, and he who will may freely behold
them. The great vision of all is seen at the feast of the gods, when they
ascend the heights of the empyrean--all but Hestia, who is left at home to
keep house. The chariots of the gods glide readily upwards and stand upon
the outside; the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they
have a vision of the world beyond. But the others labour in vain; for the
mortal steed, if he has not been properly trained, keeps them down and
sinks them towards the earth. Of the world which is beyond the heavens,
who can tell? There is an essence formless, colourless, intangible,
perceived by the mind only, dwelling in the region of true knowledge. The
divine mind in her revolution enjoys this fair prospect, and beholds
justice, temperance, and knowledge in their everlasting essence. When
fulfilled with the sight of them she returns home, and the charioteer puts
up the horses in their stable, and gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to
drink. This is the life of the gods; the human soul tries to reach the
same heights, but hardly succeeds; and sometimes the head of the charioteer
rises above, and sometimes sinks below, the fair vision, and he is at last
obliged, after much contention, to turn away and leave the plain of truth.
But if the soul has followed in the train of her god and once beheld truth
she is preserved from harm, and is carried round in the next revolution of
the spheres; and if always following, and always seeing the truth, is then
for ever unharmed. If, however, she drops her wings and falls to the
earth, then she takes the form of man, and the soul which has seen most of
the truth passes into a philosopher or lover; that which has seen truth in
the second degree, into a king or warrior; the third, into a householder or
money-maker; the fourth, into a gymnast; the fifth, into a prophet or
mystic; the sixth, into a poet or imitator; the seventh, into a husbandman
or craftsman; the eighth, into a sophist or demagogue; the ninth, into a
tyrant. All these are states of probation, wherein he who lives
righteously is improved, and he who lives unrighteously deteriorates.
After death comes the judgment; the bad depart to houses of correction
under the earth, the good to places of joy in heaven. When a thousand
years have elapsed the souls meet together and choose the lives which they
will lead for another period of existence. The soul which three times in
succession has chosen the life of a philosopher or of a lover who is not
without philosophy receives her wings at the close of the third millennium;
the remainder have to complete a cycle of ten thousand years before their
wings are restored to them. Each time there is full liberty of choice.
The soul of a man may descend into a beast, and return again into the form
of man. But the form of man will only be taken by the soul which has once
seen truth and acquired some conception of the universal:--this is the
recollection of the knowledge which she attained when in the company of the
Gods. And men in general recall only with difficulty the things of another
world, but the mind of the philosopher has a better remembrance of them.
For when he beholds the visible beauty of earth his enraptured soul passes
in thought to those glorious sights of justice and wisdom and temperance
and truth which she once gazed upon in heaven. Then she celebrated holy
mysteries and beheld blessed apparitions shining in pure light, herself
pure, and not as yet entombed in the body. And still, like a bird eager to
quit its cage, she flutters and looks upwards, and is therefore deemed mad.
Such a recollection of past days she receives through sight, the keenest of
our senses, because beauty, alone of the ideas, has any representation on
earth: wisdom is invisible to mortal eyes. But the corrupted nature,
blindly excited by this vision of beauty, rushes on to enjoy, and would
fain wallow like a brute beast in sensual pleasures. Whereas the true
mystic, who has seen the many sights of bliss, when he beholds a god-like
form or face is amazed with delight, and if he were not afraid of being
thought mad he would fall down and worship. Then the stiffened wing begins
to relax and grow again; desire which has been imprisoned pours over the
soul of the lover; the germ of the wing unfolds, and stings, and pangs of
birth, like the cutting of teeth, are everywhere felt. (Compare Symp.)
Father and mother, and goods and laws and proprieties are nothing to him;
his beloved is his physician, who can alone cure his pain. An apocryphal
sacred writer says that the power which thus works in him is by mortals
called love, but the immortals call him dove, or the winged one, in order
to represent the force of his wings--such at any rate is his nature. Now
the characters of lovers depend upon the god whom they followed in the
other world; and they choose their loves in this world accordingly. The
followers of Ares are fierce and violent; those of Zeus seek out some
philosophical and imperial nature; the attendants of Here find a royal
love; and in like manner the followers of every god seek a love who is like
their god; and to him they communicate the nature which they have received
from their god. The manner in which they take their love is as follows:--

I told you about the charioteer and his two steeds, the one a noble animal
who is guided by word and admonition only, the other an ill-looking villain
who will hardly yield to blow or spur. Together all three, who are a
figure of the soul, approach the vision of love. And now a fierce conflict
begins. The ill-conditioned steed rushes on to enjoy, but the charioteer,
who beholds the beloved with awe, falls back in adoration, and forces both
the steeds on their haunches; again the evil steed rushes forwards and
pulls shamelessly. The conflict grows more and more severe; and at last
the charioteer, throwing himself backwards, forces the bit out of the
clenched teeth of the brute, and pulling harder than ever at the reins,
covers his tongue and jaws with blood, and forces him to rest his legs and
haunches with pain upon the ground. When this has happened several times,
the villain is tamed and humbled, and from that time forward the soul of
the lover follows the beloved in modesty and holy fear. And now their
bliss is consummated; the same image of love dwells in the breast of
either, and if they have self-control, they pass their lives in the
greatest happiness which is attainable by man--they continue masters of
themselves, and conquer in one of the three heavenly victories. But if
they choose the lower life of ambition they may still have a happy destiny,
though inferior, because they have not the approval of the whole soul. At
last they leave the body and proceed on their pilgrim's progress, and those
who have once begun can never go back. When the time comes they receive
their wings and fly away, and the lovers have the same wings.

Socrates concludes:--

These are the blessings of love, and thus have I made my recantation in
finer language than before: I did so in order to please Phaedrus. If I
said what was wrong at first, please to attribute my error to Lysias, who
ought to study philosophy instead of rhetoric, and then he will not mislead
his disciple Phaedrus.

Phaedrus is afraid that he will lose conceit of Lysias, and that Lysias
will be out of conceit with himself, and leave off making speeches, for the
politicians have been deriding him. Socrates is of opinion that there is
small danger of this; the politicians are themselves the great rhetoricians
of the age, who desire to attain immortality by the authorship of laws.
And therefore there is nothing with which they can reproach Lysias in being
a writer; but there may be disgrace in being a bad one.

And what is good or bad writing or speaking? While the sun is hot in the
sky above us, let us ask that question: since by rational conversation man
lives, and not by the indulgence of bodily pleasures. And the grasshoppers
who are chirruping around may carry our words to the Muses, who are their
patronesses; for the grasshoppers were human beings themselves in a world
before the Muses, and when the Muses came they died of hunger for the love
of song. And they carry to them in heaven the report of those who honour
them on earth.

The first rule of good speaking is to know and speak the truth; as a
Spartan proverb says, 'true art is truth'; whereas rhetoric is an art of
enchantment, which makes things appear good and evil, like and unlike, as
the speaker pleases. Its use is not confined, as people commonly suppose,
to arguments in the law courts and speeches in the assembly; it is rather a
part of the art of disputation, under which are included both the rules of
Gorgias and the eristic of Zeno. But it is not wholly devoid of truth.
Superior knowledge enables us to deceive another by the help of
resemblances, and to escape from such a deception when employed against
ourselves. We see therefore that even in rhetoric an element of truth is
required. For if we do not know the truth, we can neither make the gradual
departures from truth by which men are most easily deceived, nor guard
ourselves against deception.

Socrates then proposes that they shall use the two speeches as
illustrations of the art of rhetoric; first distinguishing between the
debatable and undisputed class of subjects. In the debatable class there
ought to be a definition of all disputed matters. But there was no such
definition in the speech of Lysias; nor is there any order or connection in
his words any more than in a nursery rhyme. With this he compares the
regular divisions of the other speech, which was his own (and yet not his
own, for the local deities must have inspired him). Although only a
playful composition, it will be found to embody two principles: first, that
of synthesis or the comprehension of parts in a whole; secondly, analysis,
or the resolution of the whole into parts. These are the processes of
division and generalization which are so dear to the dialectician, that
king of men. They are effected by dialectic, and not by rhetoric, of which
the remains are but scanty after order and arrangement have been
subtracted. There is nothing left but a heap of 'ologies' and other
technical terms invented by Polus, Theodorus, Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, and
others, who have rules for everything, and who teach how to be short or
long at pleasure. Prodicus showed his good sense when he said that there
was a better thing than either to be short or long, which was to be of
convenient length.

Still, notwithstanding the absurdities of Polus and others, rhetoric has
great power in public assemblies. This power, however, is not given by any
technical rules, but is the gift of genius. The real art is always being
confused by rhetoricians with the preliminaries of the art. The perfection
of oratory is like the perfection of anything else; natural power must be
aided by art. But the art is not that which is taught in the schools of
rhetoric; it is nearer akin to philosophy. Pericles, for instance, who was
the most accomplished of all speakers, derived his eloquence not from
rhetoric but from the philosophy of nature which he learnt of Anaxagoras.
True rhetoric is like medicine, and the rhetorician has to consider the
natures of men's souls as the physician considers the natures of their
bodies. Such and such persons are to be affected in this way, such and
such others in that; and he must know the times and the seasons for saying
this or that. This is not an easy task, and this, if there be such an art,
is the art of rhetoric.

I know that there are some professors of the art who maintain probability
to be stronger than truth. But we maintain that probability is engendered
by likeness of the truth which can only be attained by the knowledge of it,
and that the aim of the good man should not be to please or persuade his
fellow-servants, but to please his good masters who are the gods. Rhetoric
has a fair beginning in this.

Enough of the art of speaking; let us now proceed to consider the true use
of writing. There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of
writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he
would only spoil men's memories and take away their understandings. From
this tale, of which young Athens will probably make fun, may be gathered
the lesson that writing is inferior to speech. For it is like a picture,
which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful likeness
of a living creature. It has no power of adaptation, but uses the same
words for all. It is not a legitimate son of knowledge, but a bastard, and
when an attack is made upon this bastard neither parent nor anyone else is
there to defend it. The husbandman will not seriously incline to sow his
seed in such a hot-bed or garden of Adonis; he will rather sow in the
natural soil of the human soul which has depth of earth; and he will
anticipate the inner growth of the mind, by writing only, if at all, as a
remedy against old age. The natural process will be far nobler, and will
bring forth fruit in the minds of others as well as in his own.

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,--that until a man knows
the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other
men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the
written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered
by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man's own bosom, and
their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as
he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all
composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce
that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are
not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers. All others are
mere flatterers and putters together of words. This is the message which
Phaedrus undertakes to carry to Lysias from the local deities, and Socrates
himself will carry a similar message to his favourite Isocrates, whose
future distinction as a great rhetorician he prophesies. The heat of the
day has passed, and after offering up a prayer to Pan and the nymphs,
Socrates and Phaedrus depart.

There are two principal controversies which have been raised about the
Phaedrus; the first relates to the subject, the second to the date of the
Dialogue.

There seems to be a notion that the work of a great artist like Plato
cannot fail in unity, and that the unity of a dialogue requires a single
subject. But the conception of unity really applies in very different
degrees and ways to different kinds of art; to a statue, for example, far
more than to any kind of literary composition, and to some species of
literature far more than to others. Nor does the dialogue appear to be a
style of composition in which the requirement of unity is most stringent;
nor should the idea of unity derived from one sort of art be hastily
transferred to another. The double titles of several of the Platonic
Dialogues are a further proof that the severer rule was not observed by
Plato. The Republic is divided between the search after justice and the
construction of the ideal state; the Parmenides between the criticism of
the Platonic ideas and of the Eleatic one or being; the Gorgias between the
art of speaking and the nature of the good; the Sophist between the
detection of the Sophist and the correlation of ideas. The Theaetetus, the
Politicus, and the Philebus have also digressions which are but remotely
connected with the main subject.

Thus the comparison of Plato's other writings, as well as the reason of the
thing, lead us to the conclusion that we must not expect to find one idea
pervading a whole work, but one, two, or more, as the invention of the
writer may suggest, or his fancy wander. If each dialogue were confined to
the development of a single idea, this would appear on the face of the
dialogue, nor could any controversy be raised as to whether the Phaedrus
treated of love or rhetoric. But the truth is that Plato subjects himself
to no rule of this sort. Like every great artist he gives unity of form to
the different and apparently distracting topics which he brings together.
He works freely and is not to be supposed to have arranged every part of
the dialogue before he begins to write. He fastens or weaves together the
frame of his discourse loosely and imperfectly, and which is the warp and
which is the woof cannot always be determined.

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