: Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates 3rd ed. Volume 3 by Grote George - Plato; Socrates 470 BC-399 BC; Philosophy Ancient

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mpulse towards mental communion with some favoured youth, in the view of producing mental improvement, good, and happiness to both persons concerned: the same impulse afterwards expanding, so as to grasp the good and beautiful in a larger sense, and ultimately to fasten on goodness and beauty in the pure Idea: which is absolute--independent of time, place, circumstances, and all variable elements--moreover the object of the one and supreme science.

Eros is, mad, irrational, superseding reason and prudence in the individual mind. This is true: yet still Eros exercises a beneficent and improving influence. Not all madness is bad. Some varieties of it are bad, but others are good. Some arise from human malady, others from the inspirations of the Gods: both of them supersede human reason and the orthodoxy of established custom--but the former substitute what is worse, the latter what is better. The greatest blessings enjoyed by man arise from madness, when it is imparted by divine inspiration. And it is so imparted in four different phases and by four different Gods: Apollo infuses the prophetic madness--Dionysus, the ritual or religious--The Muses, the poetical--and Eros, the erotic. This last sort of madness greatly transcends the sober reason and concentration upon narrow objects which is so much praised by mankind generally. The inspired and exalted lover deserves every preference over the unimpassioned friend.

Plato then illustrates, by a highly poetical and imaginative mythe, the growth and working of love in the soul. All soul or mind is essentially self-moving, and the cause of motion to other things. It is therefore immortal, without beginning or end: the universal or cosmic soul, as well as the individual souls of Gods and men. Each soul may be compared to a chariot with a winged pair of horses. In the divine soul, both the horses are excellent, with perfect wings: in the human soul, one only of them is good, the other is violent and rebellious, often disobedient to the charioteer, and with feeble or half-grown wings. The Gods, by means of their wings, are enabled to ascend up to the summit of the celestial firmament--to place themselves upon the outer circumference or back of the heaven--and thus to be carried round along with the rotation of the celestial sphere round the Earth. In the course of this rotation they contemplate the pure essences and Ideas, truth and reality without either form or figure or colour: they enjoy the vision of the Absolute--Justice, Temperance, Beauty, Science. The human souls, with their defective wings, try to accompany the Gods; some attaching themselves to one God, some to another, in this ascent. But many of them fail in the object, being thrown back upon earth in consequence of their defective equipment, and the unruly character of one of the horses: some however succeed partially, obtaining glimpses of Truth and of the general Ideas, though in a manner transient and incomplete.

Those souls which have not seen Truth or general Ideas at all, can never be joined with the body of a man, but only with that of some inferior animal. It is essential that some glimpse of truth should have been obtained, in order to qualify the soul for the condition of man: for the mind of man must possess within itself the capacity of comparing and combining particular sensations, so as to rise to one general conception brought together by reason. This is brought about by the process of reminiscence; whereby it recalls those pure, true, and beautiful Ideas which it had partially seen during its prior extra-corporeal existence in companionship with the Gods. The rudimentary faculty of thus reviving these general Conceptions--the visions of a prior state of existence--belongs to all men, distinguishing them from other animals: but in most men the visions have been transient, and the power of reviving them is faint and dormant. It is only some few philosophers, whose minds, having been effectively winged in their primitive state for ascent to the super-celestial regions, have enjoyed such a full contemplation of the divine Ideas as to be able to recall them with facility and success, during the subsequent corporeal existence. To the reminiscence of the philosopher, these Ideas present themselves with such brilliancy and fascination, that he forgets all other pursuits and interests. Hence he is set down as a madman by the generality of mankind, whose minds have not ascended beyond particular and present phenomena to the revival of the anterior Ideas.

It is by the aspect of visible beauty, as embodied in distinguished youth, that this faculty of reminiscence is first kindled in minds capable of the effort. It is only the embodiment of beauty, acting as it does powerfully upon the most intellectual of our senses, which has sufficient force to kindle up the first act or stage of reminiscence in the mind, leading ultimately to the revival of the Idea of Beauty. The embodiments of justice, wisdom, temperance, &c., in particular men, do not strike forcibly on the senses, nor approximate sufficiently to the original Idea, to effect the first stroke of reminiscence in an unprepared mind. It is only the visible manifestation of beauty, which strikes with sufficient shock at once on the senses and the intellect, to recall in the mind an adumbration of the primitive Idea of Beauty. The shock thus received first develops the reminiscent faculty in minds apt and predisposed to it, and causes the undeveloped wings of the soul to begin growing. It is a passion of violent and absorbing character; which may indeed take a sensual turn, by the misconduct of the unruly horse in the team, producing in that case nothing but corruption and mischief--but which may also take a virtuous, sentimental, imaginative turn, and becomes in that case the most powerful stimulus towards mental improvement in both the two attached friends. When thus refined and spiritualised, it can find its satisfaction only in philosophical communion, in the generation of wisdom and virtue; as well as in the complete cultivation of that reminiscent power, which vivifies in the mind remembrance of Forms or Ideas seen in a prior existence. To attain such perfection, is given to few; but a greater or less approximation may be made to it. And it is the only way of developing the highest powers and virtues of the mind; which must spring, not from human prudence and sobriety, but from divine madness or erotic inspiration.

--245 B:

Various remarks may be made, in comparing this exposition of Diotima in the Symposion with that which we read in the Phaedrus and Phaedon.

First, in the Phaedrus and Phaedon , the pre-existence of the soul, and its antecedent familiarity, greater or less, with the world of Ideas,--are brought into the foreground; so as to furnish a basis for that doctrine of reminiscence, which is one of the peculiar characteristics of Plato. The Form or Idea, when once disengaged from the appendages by which it has been overgrown, is said to be recognised by the mind and welcomed as an old acquaintance. But in the Symposion, no such doctrine is found. The mind is described as rising by gradual steps from the concrete and particular to the abstract and general, by recognising the sameness of one attribute as pervading many particulars, and by extending its comparisons from smaller groups of particulars to larger; until at length one and the same attribute is perceived to belong to all. The mind is supposed to evolve out of itself, and to generate in some companion mind, certain abstract or general conceptions, correlating with the Forms or Concepta without. The fundamental postulate here is, not that of pre-existence, but that of in-dwelling conceptions.

Thirdly, in Phaedrus, Phaedon, Republic, and elsewhere, Plato recognises many distinct Forms or Ideas--a world or aggregate of such Entia Rationis--among which Beauty is one, but only one. It is the exalted privilege of the philosophic mind to come into contemplation and cognition of these Forms generally. But in the Symposion, the Form of Beauty is presented singly and exclusively--as if the communion with this one Form were the sole occupation of the most exalted philosophy.

Fourthly, The Phaedrus and Symposion have, both of them in common, the theory of Eros as the indispensable, initiatory, stimulus to philosophy. The spectacle of a beautiful youth is considered necessary to set light to various elements in the mind, which would otherwise remain dormant and never burn: it enables the pregnant and capable mind to bring forth what it has within and to put out its hidden strength. But if we look to the Phaedon, Theaet?tus, Sophist?s, or Republic, we shall not find Eros invoked for any such function. The Republic describes an elaborate scheme for generating and developing the philosophic capacity: but Eros plays no part in it. In the Theaet?tus, the young man so named is announced as having a pregnant mind requiring to be disburthened, and great capacity which needs foreign aid to develop it: the service needed is rendered by Sokrates, who possesses an obstetric patent, and a marvellous faculty of cross-examination. Yet instead of any auxiliary stimulus arising from personal beauty, the personal ugliness of both persons in the dialogue is emphatically signified.

I note these peculiarities, partly of the Symposion, partly of the Phaedrus along with it--to illustrate the varying points of view which the reader must expect to meet in travelling through the numerous Platonic dialogues.

, &c.

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