losophy by the arts to the dishonoured maiden, and of the tyrant
to the parricide, who 'beats his father, having first taken away his
arms': the dog, who is your only philosopher: the grotesque and rather
paltry image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws),
which is repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias: the argument
personified as veiling her face (Republic), as engaged in a chase, as
breaking upon us in a first, second and third wave:--on these figures
of speech the changes are rung many times over. It is observable
that nearly all these parables or continuous images are found in the
Republic; that which occurs in the Theaetetus, of the midwifery of
Socrates, is perhaps the only exception. To make the list complete,
the mathematical figure of the number of the state (Republic), or the
numerical interval which separates king from tyrant, should not be
forgotten.

The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of another life
which, like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences
of the mysteries. It is a vision of the rewards and punishments which
await good and bad men after death. It supposes the body to continue
and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes a
Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo
and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only.
The argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the meaning
breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and consistency
of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the chief
point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is
no possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of
foreseeing death, and brings together the souls both of them and their
judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both are exposed to
view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might prevent them from
seeing into or being seen by one another.

The myth of the Phaedo is of the same type, but it is more cosmological,
and also more poetical. The beautiful and ingenious fancy occurs
to Plato that the upper atmosphere is an earth and heaven in one, a
glorified earth, fairer and purer than that in which we dwell. As the
fishes live in the ocean, mankind are living in a lower sphere, out
of which they put their heads for a moment or two and behold a world
beyond. The earth which we inhabit is a sediment of the coars