ne, were naturally connected
in the minds of early thinkers, because there was little or nothing in
the space between them. Thus there is a basis of philosophy, on which
the improbabilities of the tale may be said to rest. These are some of
the devices by which Plato, like a modern novelist, seeks to familiarize
the marvellous.

The myth, like that of the Timaeus and Critias, is rather historical
than poetical, in this respect corresponding to the general change in
the later writings of Plato, when compared with the earlier ones. It
is hardly a myth in the sense in which the term might be applied to the
myth of the Phaedrus, the Republic, the Phaedo, or the Gorgias, but
may be more aptly compared with the didactic tale in which Protagoras
describes the fortunes of primitive man, or with the description of
the gradual rise of a new society in the Third Book of the Laws. Some
discrepancies may be observed between the mythology of the Statesman and
the Timaeus, and between the Timaeus and the Republic. But there is no
reason to expect that all Plato's visions of a former, any more than
of a future, state of existence, should conform exactly to the same
pattern. We do not find perfect consistency in his philosophy; and still
less have we any right to demand this of him in his use of mythology and
figures of speech. And we observe that while employing all the resources
of a writer of fiction to give credibility to his tales, he is not
disposed to insist upon their literal truth. Rather, as in the Phaedo,
he says, 'Something of the kind is true;' or, as in the Gorgias, 'This
you will think to be an old wife's tale, but you can think of nothing
truer;' or, as in the Statesman, he describes his work as a 'mass of
mythology,' which was introduced in order to teach certain lessons; or,
as in the Phaedrus, he secretly laughs at such stories while refusing to
disturb the popular belief in them.

The greater interest of the myth consists in the philosophical lessons
which Plato presents to us in this veiled form. Here, as in the tale
of Er, the son of Armenius, he touches upon the question of freedom and
necessity, both in relation to God and nature. For at first the universe
is governed by the immediate providence of God,--this is the golden
age,--but after a while the wheel is reversed, and man is left to
himself. Like other theologians and philosophers, Plato relegates his
explanation of the problem to a transcendental world; he