nal Sun, a spark of the Divinity, an emanation from God.
On the other side it is linked to the phenomenal or sensible world, its
emotive part[550] being formed of that which is relative and phenomenal.
The soul of man thus stands midway between the eternal and the
contingent, the real and the phenomenal, and as such, it is the mediator
between, and the interpreter of, both.

[Footnote 550: thymeides, the seat of the nobler--epithymetikon, the
seat of the baser passions.]

In the allegory of the "Chariot and Winged Steeds"[551] Plato represents
the lower or inferior part of man's nature as dragging the soul down to
the earth, and subjecting it to the slavery and debasement of corporeal
conditions. Out of these conditions there arise numerous evils that
disorder the mind and becloud the reason, for evil is inherent to the
condition of finite and multiform being into which we have "fallen by
our own fault." The present earthly life is a fall and a punishment. The
soul is now dwelling in "the grave we call the body." In its incorporate
state, and previous to the discipline of education, the rational element
is "asleep." "Life is more of a dream than a reality." Men are utterly
the slaves of sense, the sport of phantoms and illusions. We now
resemble those "captives chained in a subterraneous cave," so poetically
described in the seventh book of the "Republic;" their backs are turned
to the light, and consequently they see but the shadows of the objects
which pass behind them, and they "attribute to these shadows a perfect
reality." Their sojourn upon earth is thus a dark imprisonment in the
body, a dreamy exile from their proper home. "Nevertheless these pale
fugitive shadows suffice to revive in us the reminiscence of that higher
world we once inhabited, if we have not absolutely given the reins to
the impetuous untamed horse which in Platonic symbolism represents the
emotive sensuous nature of man." The soul has some dim and shadowy
recollection of its ante-natal state of bliss, and some instinctive and
proleptic yearnings for its return.

[Footnote 551: "Phaedrus," Sec. 54-62.]

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Has had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar,
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home."[552]

[Footnote 552: Wo