l is compared to a charioteer driving two
winged steeds, one mortal, the other immortal; the one ever tending
towards the earth, the other seeking ever to soar into the sky, where
it may behold those blessed visions of loveliness and wisdom and
goodness, which are the true nurture of the soul. When the chariots of
the gods go forth in mighty and glorious procession, the soul would
fain ride forth in their train; but alas! the mortal steed is ever
hampering the immortal, and dragging it down.

If the soul yields to this influence and descends to earth, there she
takes human form, but in higher {145} or lower degree, according to the
measure of her vision of the truth. She may become a philosopher, a
king, a trader, an athlete, a prophet, a poet, a husbandman, a sophist,
a tyrant. But whatever her lot, according to her manner of life in it,
may she rise, or sink still further, even to a beast or plant.

Only those souls take the form of humanity that have had _some_ vision
of eternal truth. And this vision they retain in a measure, even when
clogged in mortal clay. And so the soul of man is ever striving and
fluttering after something beyond; and specially is she stirred to
aspiration by the sight of bodily loveliness. Then above all comes the
test of good and evil in the soul. The nature that has been corrupted
would fain rush to brutal joys; but the purer nature looks with
reverence and wonder at this beauty, for it is an adumbration of the
celestial joys which he still remembers vaguely from the heavenly
vision. And thus pure and holy love becomes an opening back to heaven;
it is a source of happiness unalloyed on earth; it guides the lovers on
upward wings back to the heaven whence they came.

{146}

CHAPTER XV

PLATO (_continued_)

_The Republic--Denizens of the cave--The Timaeus--A dream of creation_

And now we pass to the central and crowning work of Plato, _The
Republic_, or _Of Justice_--the longest with one exception, and
certainly the greatest of all his works. It combines the humour and
irony, the vivid characterisation and lively dialogue of his earlier
works, with the larger and more serious view, the more constructive and
statesmanlike aims of his later life. The dialogue opens very
beautifully. There has been a festal procession at the Piraeus, the
harbour of Athens, and Socrates with a companion is wending his way
homeward, when he is recalled by other companions, who induce hi