Phaedrus
but when his love ceases he becomes a perfidious enemy of him on whom
he showered his oaths and prayers and promises, and yet could hardly
prevail upon him to tolerate the tedium of his company even from motives
of interest. The hour of payment arrives, and now he is the servant of
another master; instead of love and infatuation, wisdom and temperance
are his bosom's lords; but the beloved has not discovered the change
which has taken place in him, when he asks for a return and recalls to
his recollection former sayings and doings; he believes himself to be
speaking to the same person, and the other, not having the courage to
confess the truth, and not knowing how to fulfil the oaths and promises
which he made when under the dominion of folly, and having now grown
wise and temperate, does not want to do as he did or to be as he was
before. And so he runs away and is constrained to be a defaulter; the
oyster-shell (In allusion to a game in which two parties fled or pursued
according as an oyster-shell which was thrown into the air fell with
the dark or light side uppermost.) has fallen with the other side
uppermost--he changes pursuit into flight, while the other is compelled
to follow him with passion and imprecation, not knowing that he ought
never from the first to have accepted a demented lover instead of a
sensible non-lover; and that in making such a choice he was giving
himself up to a faithless, morose, envious, disagreeable being, hurtful
to his estate, hurtful to his bodily health, and still more hurtful to
the cultivation of his mind, than which there neither is nor ever will
be anything more honoured in the eyes both of gods and men. Consider
this, fair youth, and know that in the friendship of the lover there is
no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you:
'As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.'
But I told you so, I am speaking in verse, and therefore I had better
make an end; enough.
PHAEDRUS: I thought that you were only half-way and were going to make a
similar speech about all the advantages of accepting the non-lover. Why
do you not proceed?
SOCRATES: Does not your simplicity observe that I have got out of
dithyrambics into heroics, when only uttering a censure on the lover?
And if I am to add the praises of the non-lover what will become of me?
Do you not perceive that I am already overtaken by the Nymphs to whom
you have mischievously exposed me? And therefore I will only add that
the non-lover has all the advantages in which the lover is accused of
being deficient. And now I will say no more; there has been enough of
both of them. Leaving the tale to its fate, I will cross the river and
make the best of my way home, lest a worse thing be inflicted upon me by
you.
PHAEDRUS: Not yet, Socrates; not until the heat of the day has passed;
do you not see that the hour is almost noon? there is the midday sun
standing still, as people say, in the meridian. Let us rather stay and
talk over what has been said, and then return in the cool.
SOCRATES: Your love of discourse, Phaedrus, is superhuman, simply
marvellous, and I do not believe that there is any one of your
contemporaries who has either made or in one way or another has
compelled others to make an equal number of speeches. I would except
Simmias the Theban, but all the rest are far behind you. And now I do
verily believe that you have been the cause of another.
PHAEDRUS: That is good news. But what do you mean?
SOCRATES: I mean to say that as I was about to cross the stream the
usual sign was given to me,--that sign which always forbids, but never
bids, me to do anything which I am going to do; and I thought that I
heard a voice saying in my ear that I had been guilty of impiety,
and that I must not go away until I had made an atonement. Now I am a
diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my
own use, as you might say of a bad writer--his writing is good enough
for him; and I am beginning to see that I was in error. O my friend, how
prophetic is the human soul! At the time I had a sort of misgiving, and,
like Ibycus, 'I was troubled; I feared that I might be buying honour
from men at the price of sinning against the gods.' Now I recognize my
error.
PHAEDRUS: What error?
SOCRATES: That was a dreadful speech which you brought with you, and you
made me utter one as bad.
PHAEDRUS: How so?
SOCRATES: It was foolish, I say,--to a certain extent, impious; can
anything be more dreadful?
PHAEDRUS: Nothing, if the speech was really such as you describe.
SOCRATES: Well, and is not Eros the son of Aphrodite, and a god?
PHAEDRUS: So men say.
SOCRATES: But that was not acknowledged by Lysias in his speech, nor by
you in that other speech which you by a charm drew from my lips. For if
love be, as he surely is, a divinity, he cannot be evil. Yet this was
the error of both the speeches. There was also a simplicity about them
which was refreshing; having no truth or honesty in them, nevertheless
they pretended to be something, hoping to succeed in deceiving the
manikins of earth and gain celebrity among them. Wherefore I must have
a purgation. And I bethink me of an ancient purgation of mythological
error which was devised, not by Homer, for he never had the wit to
discover why he was blind, but by Stesichorus, who was a philosopher and
knew the reason why; and therefore, when he lost his eyes, for that was
the penalty which was inflicted upon him for reviling the lovely Helen,
he at once purged himself. And the purgation was a recantation, which
began thus,--
'False is that word of mine--the truth is that thou didst not embark in
ships, nor ever go to the walls of Troy;'
and when he had completed his poem, which is called 'the recantation,'
immediately his sight returned to him. Now I will be wiser than either
Stesichorus or Homer, in that I am going to make my recantation for
reviling love before I suffer; and this I will attempt, not as before,
veiled and ashamed, but with forehead bold and bare.
PHAEDRUS: Nothing could be more agreeable to me than to hear you say so.
SOCRATES: Only think, my good Phaedrus, what an utter want of delicacy
was shown in the two discourses; I mean, in my own and in that which you
recited out of the book. Would not any one who was himself of a noble
and gentle nature, and who loved or ever had loved a nature like his
own, when we tell of the petty causes of lovers' jealousies, and of
their exceeding animosities, and of the injuries which they do to their
beloved, have imagined that our ideas of love were taken from some haunt
of sailors to which good manners were unknown--he would certainly never
have admitted the justice of our censure?
PHAEDRUS: I dare say not, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Therefore, because I blush at the thought of this person, and
also because I am afraid of Love himself, I desire to wash the brine out
of my ears with water from the spring; and I would counsel Lysias not to
delay, but to write another discourse, which shall prove that 'ceteris
paribus' the lover ought to be accepted rather than the non-lover.
PHAEDRUS: Be assured that he shall. You shall speak the praises of the
lover, and Lysias shall be compelled by me to write another discourse on
the same theme.
SOCRATES: You will be true to your nature in that, and therefore I
believe you.
PHAEDRUS: Speak, and fear not.
SOCRATES: But where is the fair youth whom I was addressing before, and
who ought to listen now; lest, if he hear me not, he should accept a
non-lover before he knows what he is doing?
PHAEDRUS: He is close at hand, and always at your service.
SOCRATES: Know then, fair youth, that the former discourse was the word
of Phaedrus, the son of Vain Man, who dwells in the city of Myrrhina
(Myrrhinusius). And this which I am about to utter is the recantation of
Stesichorus the son of Godly Man (Euphemus), who comes from the town of
Desire (Himera), and is to the following effect: 'I told a lie when I
said' that the beloved ought to accept the non-lover when he might have
the lover, because the one is sane, and the other mad. It might be so
if madness were simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a
divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to
men. For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the
priestesses at Dodona when out of their senses have conferred great
benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life, but when in their
senses few or none. And I might also tell you how the Sibyl and other
inspired persons have given to many an one many an intimation of the
future which has saved them from falling. But it would be tedious to
speak of what every one knows.
There will be more reason in appealing to the ancient inventors of names
(compare Cratylus), who would never have connected prophecy (mantike)
which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, with madness
(manike), or called them both by the same name, if they had deemed
madness to be a disgrace or dishonour;--they must have thought that
there was an inspired madness which was a noble thing; for the two
words, mantike and manike, are really the same, and the letter tau is
only a modern and tasteless insertion. And this is confirmed by the
name which was given by them to the rational investigation of futurity,
whether made by the help of birds or of other signs--this, for as much
as it is an art which supplies from the reasoning faculty mind (nous)
and information (istoria) to human thought (oiesis) they originally
termed oionoistike, but the word has been lately altered and made
sonorous by the modern introduction of the letter Omega (oionoistike and
oionistike), and in proportion as prophecy (mantike) is more perfect and
august than augury, both in name and fact, in the same proportion, as
the ancients testify, is madness superior to a sane mind (sophrosune)
for the one is only of human, but the other of divine origin. Again,
where plagues and mightiest woes have bred in certain families, owing
to some ancient blood-guiltiness, there madness has entered with holy
prayers and rites, and by inspired utterances found a way of deliverance
for those who are in need; and he who has part in this gift, and is
truly possessed and duly out of his mind, is by the use of purifications
and mysteries made whole and exempt from evil, future as well as
present, and has a release from the calamity which was afflicting him.
The third kind is the madness of those who are possessed by the Muses;
which taking hold of a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring
frenzy, awakens lyrical and all other numbers; with these adorning the
myriad actions of ancient heroes for the instruction of posterity. But
he who, having no touch of the Muses' madness in his soul, comes to the
door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art--he,
I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man disappears and is
nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the madman.
I might tell of many other noble deeds which have sprung from inspired
madness. And therefore, let no one frighten or flutter us by saying that
the temperate friend is to be chosen rather than the inspired, but let
him further show that love is not sent by the gods for any good to lover
or beloved; if he can do so we will allow him to carry off the palm. And
we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness of love is
the greatest of heaven's blessings, and the proof shall be one which the
wise will receive, and the witling disbelieve. But first of all, let us
view the affections and actions of the soul divine and human, and try
to ascertain the truth about them. The beginning of our proof is as
follows:--