fter he was slain coincide with the time
passed by the spirits in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation,
not often made, that good men who have lived in a well-governed city
(shall we say in a religious and respectable society?) are more likely
to make mistakes in their choice of life than those who have had more
experience of the world and of evil. It is a more familiar remark that
we constantly blame others when we have only ourselves to blame; and
the philosopher must acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is an
element of chance in human life with which it is sometimes impossible
for man to cope. That men drink more of the waters of forgetfulness than
is good for them is a poetical description of a familiar truth. We have
many of us known men who, like Odysseus, have wearied of ambition
and have only desired rest. We should like to know what became of the
infants 'dying almost as soon as they were born,' but Plato only raises,
without satisfying, our curiosity. The two companies of souls, ascending
and descending at either chasm of heaven and earth, and conversing
when they come out into the meadow, the majestic figures of the judges
sitting in heaven, the voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of the
great allegory which have an indescribable grandeur and power. The
remark already made respecting the inconsistency of the two other myths
must be extended also to this: it is at once an orrery, or model of the
heavens, and a picture of the Day of Judgment.

The three myths are unlike anything else in Plato. There is an Oriental,
or rather an Egyptian element in them, and they have an affinity to the
mysteries and to the Orphic modes of worship. To a certain extent they
are un-Greek; at any rate there is hardly anything like them in
other Greek writings which have a serious purpose; in spirit they are
mediaeval. They are akin to what may be termed the underground religion
in all ages and countries. They are presented in the most lively and
graphic manner, but they are never insisted on as true; it is only
affirmed that nothing better can be said about a future life. Plato
seems to make use of them when he has reached the limits of human
knowledge; or, to borrow an expression of his own, when he is standing
on the outside of the intellectual world. They are very simple in style;
a few touches bring the picture home to the mind, and make it present
to us. They have also a kind of authority gained by the emplo