Essays, letters from abroad, translation and fragments

/u^^ Av^'

^%L>tf^

ESSAYS,
LETTERS FROM ABROAD,

8fc. Sfc.

ESSAYS,
LETTERS FROM ABROAD,

TRANSLATIONS AND FRAGMENTS,

BY

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

EDITED

BY MRS. SHELLEY.

The Poet, it is true, is the son of his time; but pity for him if he is its pupil, or even its
avourite ! Let some beneficent dp ity snatch him when a suckling from the breast of his
mother, and nurse him with the milk of a better time ; that he may ripen to his full stature
beneath a distant Grecian sky. And having grown to manhood, let him return, a foreign
shape, into his century ; not however to delight it by his presence, but dreadful like tlj^e son
of Agamemnon, to purify it."— Schtllbk.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

LONDON:
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET.

LONDON :

BRADBUItY AND EVANS, PRINTERS,

WHITEFRIARS.

PREFACE

BY THE EDITOR.

These volumes have long been due to the public ;
they form an important portion of all that was left
by Shelley, whence those who did not know him
may form a juster estimate of his virtues and his
genius than has hitherto been done.

We find, in the verse of a poet, " the record of
the best and happiest moments of the best and
happiest minds*e'" But this is not enough — we
desire to know the man. We desire to learn how
much of the sensibility and imagination that ani-
mates his poetry was founded on heartfelt passion,
and purity, and elevation of character ; whether the

* " A Defence of Poetry."

VI PREFACE.

pathos and the fire emanated from transitory
inspiration and a power of weaving words touch-
ingly ; or whether the poet acknowledged the might
of his art in his inmost soul ; and whether his
nerves thrilled to the touch of generous emotion.
Led by such curiosity, how many volumes have
been filled with the life of the Scottish plough-boy
and the English peer ; we welcome with delight
every fact which proves that the patriotism iind
tenderness expressed in the songs of Burns, sprung
from a noble and gentle heart ; and we pore over
each letter that we expect will testify that the
melapcholy and the unbridled passion that darkens
Byron's verse, flowed from a soul devoured by
a keen susceptibility to intensest love, and indig-
nant breedings over the injuries done and suffered
by man. Let the lovers of Shelley's poetry — of
liis aspirations for a brotherhood of love, his tender
bewailings springing from a too sensitive spirit —
his sympathy with woe, his adoration of beauty,
as expressed in his poetry ; turn to these pages to
gather proof of sincerity, and to become acquainted
with the form that such gentle sympathies and
lofty aspirations wore in private life.

The first piece in these volumes, '' A Defence of

PREFACE. Vll

Poetry,'" is the only entirely finished prose work
Shelley left. In this we find the reverence with
which he regarded his art. We discern his power
of close reasoning, and the unity of his views of
human nature. The language* is imaginative but
not flowery ; the periods have an intonation full of
majesty and grace ; and the harmony of the style
being united to melodious thought, a music results,
that swells upon the ear, and fills the mind with
delight. It is a work whence a young poet, and
one suffering from wrong or neglect, may learn to
regard his pursuit and himself with that respect,
without which his genius will get clogged in the mire
of the earth : it will elevate him into those pure
regions, where there is neither pain from the stings
of insects, nor pleasure in the fruition of a gross
appetite for praise. He will learn to rest his
dearest boast on the dignity of the art he culti-
vates, and become aware that his best claim on the
applause of mankind, results from his being one
more in the holy brotherhood, whose vocation it is
to divest life of its material grossness and stooping
tendencies, and to animate it with that power of
turning all things to the beautiful and good, which
is the spirit of poetry.

VIU PREFACE.

The fragments * that follow form an introduc-
tion to " The Banquet" or "Symposium" of Plato —
and that noble piece of writing follows; which
for the first time introduces the Athenian to the
English reader in a style worthy of him. No prose
author in the history of mankind has exerted so
much influence over the world as Plato. From
him the fathers and commentators of early Chris-
tianity derived many of their most abstruse notions
and spiritual ideas. His name is familiar to our lips,
and he is regarded even by the unlearned as the
possessor of the highest imaginative faculty ever
displayed by man — the creator of much of the
purity of sentiment which in another guise was
adopted by the founders of chivalry — the man who
endowed Socrates with a large portion of that
reputation for wisdom and virtue, which surrounds
him evermore with an imperishable halo of glory.

With all this, how little is really known of Plato !
The translation we have is so harsh and un-English
in its style, as universally to repel. There are

* Small portions of these and other essays were published by
Captain Medwin in a newspaper. Generally speaking, his extracts
are incorrect and incomplete. I must except the Essay on Love,
and Remarks on some of the Statues in the Gallery of Florence^
however, as they appeared there, from the blame of these defects.

PREFACE. IX

excellent abstracts of some of his dialogues in a
periodical publication called the " Monthly Re-
pository ; *" and the mere English reader must feel
deeply obliged to the learned translator. But
these abstracts are defective from their very form
of abridgment ; and, though I am averse to speak
disparagingly of pages from which I have derived
so much pleasure and knowledge, they want the
radiance and delicacy of language with which the
ideas are invested in the original, and are dry and
stiff compared with the soaring poetry, the grace,
subtlety, and infinite variety of Plato. They want,
also, the dramatic vivacity, and the touch of nature,
that vivifies the pages of the Athenian. These
are all found here, Shelley commands language
splendid and melodious as Plato, and renders
faithfully the elegance and the gaiety which make
the Symposium as amusing as it is sublime. The
whole mechanism of the drama, for such in some
sort it is, — the enthusiasm of Apollodorus, the
sententiousness of Eryximachus, the wit of Aris-
iophanes, the rapt and golden eloquence of
Agathon, the subtle dialectics and grandeur of aim
of Socrates, the drunken outbreak of Alcibiades, —
are given with grace and animation. The picture
aS

PREFACE.

presented reminds of that talent which, in a less
degree, we may suppose to have dignified the
orgies of the last generation of free-spirited wits, —
Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Curran. It has some-
thing of the license, — too much, indeed, and
perforce omitted ; but of coarseness, that worst
sin against our nature, it has nothing.

Shelley's own definition of Love follows'; and
reveals the secrets of the most impassioned, and
yet the purest and softest heart that ever yearned
for sympathy, and was ready to give its own, in
lavish measure, in return. " The Coliseum " is a
continuation to a great degree of the same subject.
Shelley had something of the idea of a story in
this. The stranger was a Greek, — nurtured from
infancy exclusively in the literature of his progeni-
tors,— and brought up as a child of Pericles might
have been ; and the greater the resemblance, since
Shelley conceived the idea of a woman, whom he
named Diotima, who was his instructress and
guide. In speaking of his plan, this was the sort
of development he sketched; but no word more
was written than appears in these pages.

" The Assassins" was composed many years
before. The style is less chaste ; but it is warmed

PREFACE. XI

by the fire of youth. I do not know what story
he had in view. The Assassins were known in the
eleventh century as a horde of Mahometans hving
among the recesses of Lebanon, — ruled over by the
Old Man of the Mountain ; under whose direction
various murders were committed on the Crusaders,
which caused the name of the people who perpe-
trated them to be adopted in all European
languages, to designate the crime which gave
them notoriety. Shelley's old favourite, the
Wandering Jew, appears in the latter chapters,
and, with his wild and fearful introduction into
the domestic circle of a peaceful family of the
Assassins, the fragment concludes. It was never
touched afterwards. There is great beauty in the
sketch as it stands ; it breathes that spirit of
domestic peace and general brotherhood founded
on love, which was developed afterwards in the
" Prometheus Unbound."

The fragment of his " Essay on the Punishment
of Death" bears the value which the voice of a
philosopher and a poet, reasoning in favour of
humanity and refinement, must possess. It alleges
all the arguments that an imaginative man, who
can vividly figure the feelings of his fellow-creatures,

Xll PREFACE.

can alone conceive*; and it brings them home
to the calm reasoner with the logic of truth. In
the milder season that since Shelley's time has
dawned upon England, our legislators each day
approximate nearer to his views of justice ; this
piece, fragment as it is, may suggest to some
among them motives for carrying his beneficent
views into practice.

How powerful — how almost appalling, in its vivid
reality of representation, is the essay on " Life ! "
Shelley was a disciple of the Immaterial Philoso-
phy of Berkeley. This theory gave unity and
grandeur to his ideas, while it opened a wide field
for his imagination. The creation, such as it was
perceived by his mind — a unit in immensity, was
slight and narrow compared with the interminable
forms of thought that might exist beyond, to be
perceived perhaps hereafter by his own mind ; or
which are perceptible to other minds that fill the
universe, not of space in the material sense, but of
infinity in the immaterial one. Such ideas are,
in some degree, developed in his poem entitled

* *' A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and
comprehensively ; he must put himself in the place of another
and of many others ; the pains and pleasures of his species must
become his own." — A Defence of Poetry,

PREFACE. Xlll

" Heaven : "" and when he makes one of the inter-
locutors exclaim,

" Peace ! the abyss is wreathed in scorn
Of thy presumption, atom-born,"

he expresses his despair of being able to conceive,
far less express, all of variety, majesty, and
beauty, which is veiled from our imperfect senses
in the unknowTi realm, the mystery of which his
poetic vision sought in vain to penetrate.

The " Essay on a Future State" is also unhap-
pily a fragment. Shelley observes, on one occa-
sion, " man is not a being of reason only, but of
imaginations and affections." In this portion of
his Essay he gives us only that view of a future
state which is to be derived from reasoning and
analogy. It is not to be supposed that a mind
so full of vast ideas concerning the universe,
endowed with such subtle discrimination with
regard to the various modes in which this does or
may appear to our eyes, with a hvely fancy and
ardent and expansive feelings, should be content
with a mere logical view of that which even in
religion is a mystery and a wonder. I cannot
pretend to supply the deficiency, nor say what
Shelley's views were — they were vague, certainly ;

XIV PREFACE.

yet as certainly regarded the country beyond the
grave as one by no means foreign to our interests
and hopes. Considering his individual mind as a
unit divided from a mighty whole, to which it was
united by restless sympathies and an eager desire
for knowledge, he assuredly believed that hereafter,
as now, he would form a portion of that whole —
and a portion less imperfect, less suffering, than the
shackles inseparable from humanity impose on all
who live beneath the moon. To me, death appears
to be the gate of life ; but my hopes of a hereafter
would be pale and drooping, did I not expect
to find that most perfect and beloved specimen of
humanity on the other shore ; and my belief is that
spiritual improvement in this life prepares the way
to a higher existence. Traces of such a faith are
found in several passages of Shelley's works. In
one of the letters of the second volume he says,
" The destiny of man can scarcely be so degraded,
that he was born only to die."" And again, in a
journal, I find these feehngs recorded, with regard
to a danger we incurred together at sea. " I had
time in that moment to reflect and even to reason
on death ; it was rather a thing of discomfort and
disappointment than terror to me. We should

PREFACE. XV

never be separated ; but in death we might not
know and feel our union as now. I hope — but my
hopes are not unmixed with fear for what will befal
this inestimable spirit when we appear to die." A
mystic ideality tinged these speculations in Shelley's
mind ; certain stanzas in the poem of '' The Sensi-
tive Plant," express, in some degree, the almost
inexpressible idea, not that we die into another
state, when this state is no longer, from some rea-
son, unapparent as well as apparent, accordant with
our being — but that those who rise above the ordi-
nary nature of man, fade from before our imperfect
organs; they remain in their "love, beauty, and
delight," in a world congenial to them — we, clogged
by " error, ignorance, and strife," see them not, till
we are fitted by purification and improvement for
their higher state.* For myself, no religious

*" But in this life
Of terror, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant, if one considers it,
To own that death, itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that lady fair.

And all sweet shapes, and odours there,

XVI PREFACE.

doctrine, nor philosophical precept, can shake the
faith that a mind so original, so delicately and
beautifully moulded, as Shelley's, so endowed with
wondrous powers and eagle-eyed genius — so good,
so pure, would never be shattered and dispersed by
the Creator ; but that the qualities and conscious-
ness that formed him, are not only indestructible
in themselves, but in the form under which they
were united here, and that to become worthy of
him is to assure the bliss of a reunion.

The fragments of metaphysics will be highly
prized by a metaphysician. Such a one is aware
how difficult it is to strip bare the internal nature
of man, to divest it of prejudice, of the mistakes
engendered by familiarity, and by language, which
has become one with certain ideas, and those very
ideas erroneous. Had not Shelley deserted meta-
physics for poetry in his youth, and had he not
been lost to us early, so that all his vaster pro-
jects were wrecked with him in the waves, he

In truth, have never passed away ;

'Tis we, 'tis ours are changed — not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight.
There is no death, nor change ; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

PREFACE. XVII

would have presented the world with a complete
theory of mind ; a theory to which Berkeley,
Coleridge, and Kant, would have contributed ; but
more simple, unimpugnable, and entire, than
the systems of these writers. His nerves, indeed,
were so susceptible, that these intense meditations
on his own nature, thrilled him with pain. Thought
kindled imagination and awoke sensation, and ren-
dered him dizzyfrom too great keenness of emotion;
till awe and tremor possessed him, and he fled to
the voice and presence of one he loved to relieve the
mysterious agitation that shook him.*

He at one time meditated a popular essay on
morals ; to show how virtue resulted from the
nature of man, and that to fulfil its laws was to
abide by that principle from the fulfilment of which
happiness is to spring. The few pages here given
are all that he left on this subject.

The fragment marked as second in these
" Speculations on Morals" is remarkable for its
subtlety and truth. I found it on a single leaf,
disjoined from any other subject. — It gives the
true key to the history of man ; and above all, to
those rules of conduct whence mutual happiness has
its source and security.

* See Vol. I. p. 251.

XVlll PREFACE.

This concludes the essays and fragments of
Shelley.. I do not give them as the whole that he
left, but as the most interesting portion. A
Treatise on Political Reform and other fragments
remain, to be published when his works assume a
complete shape.

I do not know why Shelley selected the " Ion"
of Plato to translate. Probably because he thought
it characteristic ; that it unfolded peculiar ideas,
and those Platonic, with regard to poetry ; and gave
insight into portions of Athenian manners, pursuits,
and views, which would have been otherwise lost to
us. We find manifestation here of the exceeding
partiality felt by the Greeks, for every exhibition of
eloquence. It testifies that love of interchanging and
enlarging ideas by conversation, which in modern
society, through our domestic system of life, is too
often narrowed to petty objects, and which, from
their fashion of conversing in streets and under por-
ticos, and in public places, became a passion far more
intense than with us. Among those who ministered
exclusively to this taste, were the rhapsodists ;
and among rhapsodists, Ion himself tells us, he
was the most eminent of his day ; that he was a
man of enthusiastic and poetic temperament, and

PREFACE. XIX

abundantly gifted with the power of arranging his
thoughts in glowing and fascinating language, his
success proves. But he was singularly deficient in
reason. When Socrates presses on him the ques-
tion of, whether he as a rhapsodist is as well versed
in nautical, hippodromic, and other arts, as sailors,
charioteers, and various artisans ? he gives up the
point with the most foolish inanity. One would
fancy that practice in his pursuit would have
caused him to reply, that though he was neither
mariner nor horseman, nor practically skilled in
any other of the pursuits in question, yet that he
had consulted men versed in them ; and enriching
his mind with the knowledge afforded by adepts in
all arts, he was better qualified by study and by
his gift of language and enthusiasm to explain
these, as they form a portion of Homer's poetry,
than any individual whose knowledge was limited
to one subject only. But Ion had no such scientific
view of his profession. He gives up point after
point, till, as Socrates observes, he most absurdly
strives at victory, under the form of an expert
leader of armies. In this, as in all the other of
Plato's writings, we are perpetually referred, with
regard to the enthusiastic and ideal portion of our

XX PREFACE.

intellect, to something above and beyond our sphere,
the inspiration of the God — the influence exercised
over the human mind, either through the direct
agency of the deities, or our own half-blind
memory of divine knowledge acquired by the soul
in its antenatal state. Shelley left Ion imper-
fect— I thought it better that it should appear as
a whole — but at the same time have marked with
brackets the passages that have been added ; the
rest appears exactly as Shelley left it.

Respect for the name of Plato as well as that
of Shelley, and reliance on the curiosity that the
English reader must feel with regard to the sealed
book of the Ancient Wonder, caused me to include
in this volume the fragment of " Menexenus,",
and passages from " The Republic." In the first we
have another admirable specimen of Socratic irony.
In the latter the opinions and views of Plato
enounced in " The Republic," which appeared re-
markable to Shelley, are preserved, with the
addition, in some instances, of his own brief
observations on them.

The second volume is chiefly composed of letters.
" The Journal of a Six Weeks' Tour," and " Letters

PREFACE. XXI

from Geneva," were published many years ago by
Shelley himself. The Journal is singular, from
the circumstance that it was not written for pub-
lication, and was deemed too trivial for such by
its author. Shelley caused it to be printed, and
added to it his own letters, which contain some of
the most beautiful descriptions ever written. The
Letters from Italy, which are addressed to the
same gentleman as the recipient of the Letters
from Geneva, are in a similar spirit of observation
and remark. The reader can only regret that
they are so few, and that one or two are missing.
The eminent German writer, Jean Paul Richter,
says, that *' to describe any scene well, the poet
must make the bosom of a man his camera ohscura,
and look at it through thisy Shelley pursues this
method in all his descriptions ; he always, as he
says himself, looks beyond the actual object, for
an internal meaning, typified, illustrated, or caused,
by the external appearance. Adoring beauty,
he endeavoured to define it ; he was convinced
that the canons of taste, if known, are irrefragable ;
and that these are to be sought in the most
admirable works of art ; he therefore studied
intently, and with anxious scrutiny, the parts in

XXU PREFACE.

detail, and their harmony as a whole, to discover
what tends to form a beautiful or sublime
work.

The loss of our beloved child at Rome, which
drove us northward in trembling fear for the one
soon after born, and the climate of Florence dis-
agreeing so exceedingly with Shelley, he ceased
at Pisa to be conversant with paintings and sculp-
ture ; a circumstance he deplores in one of his
letters, and in many points of view to be greatly
regretted.

His letters to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, and to
Mr. Reveley, the son of the latter by a former
marriage, display that helpful and generous bene-
volence and friendship which was Shelley's cha-
racteristic. He set on foot the project of a
steam-boat to ply between Marseilles and Leg-
horn, for their benefit, as far as pecuniary profit
might accrue ; at the same time that he took
a fervent interest in the undertaking, for its own
sake. It was not puerile vanity, but a nobler
feeling of honest pride, that made him enjoy the
idea of being the first to introduce steam navi-
gation into the Gulf of Lyons, and to glory in the
consciousness of being in this manner useful to

PREFACE. XXlll

his fellow-creatures. Unfortunately, he was con-
demned to experience a failure. The prospects
and views of our friends drew them to England,
and the boat and the engine were abandoned.
Shelley was deeply disappointed ; yet it will be
seen how generously he exculpates our friends
to themselves, and relieves them from the re-
morse they might naturally feel for having thus
wasted his money and disappointed his desires.
It will be remembered that Shelley addressed a
poetical letter to Mrs. Gisborne, when that lady
was absent in England ; and I have mentioned,
and in some measure described her, in my notes to
the poems. " Mrs. Gisborne had been a friend of
my father in her younger days. She was a lady
of great accomplishments, and charming from her
frank affectionate nature. She had a most intense
love of knowledge, a delicate and trembling sensi-
bility, and preserved freshness of mind after a
life of considerable adversity. As a favourite
friend of my father, we had sought her with
eagerness, and the most open and cordial friend-
ship subsisted between us."

The letters to Leigh Hunt have already been
published. They are monuments of the friendship

XXIV PREFACE.

which he felt for the man to whom he dedicated
his tragedy of " The Cenci," in terms of warm and
just eulogium. I have obtained but few to other
friends. He had, indeed, not more than one or
two other correspondents. I have added such
letters as, during our brief separations in Italy,
were addressed to myself ; precious relics of love,
kindness, gentleness, and wisdom. I have but
one fault to find with them, or with Shelley, in my
union with him. His inexpressible tenderness of
disposition made him delight in giving pleasure,
and, urged by this feeling, he praised too much.
Nor were his endeavours to exalt his correspondent
in her own eyes founded on this feeling only. He
had never read " Wilhelm Meister," but I have
heard him say that he regulated his conduct
towards his friends by a maxim which I found
afterwards in the pages of Goethe — " When
we take people merely as ^ they are, we make
them worse ; when we treat them as if they
were what they should be, we improve them as
far as they can be improved,'' This rule may
perhaps admit of dispute, and it may be argued
that truth and frankness produce better fruits
than the most generous deceit. But when we

PREFACE. XXV

consider the difficulty of keeping our best virtues
free from self-blindness and self-love, and re-
collect the intolerance and fault-finding that
usually blots social intercourse ; and compare
such with the degree of forbearance and imagin-
ative sympathy, se to speak, which such a system
necessitates, we must think highly of the gene-
rosity and self-abnegation of the man who regu-
lated his conduct undeviatingly by it.

Can anything be more beautiful than these let-
ters ? They are adorned by simplicity, tenderness,
and generosity, combined with manly views, and
acute observation. His practical opinions may be
found here. His indignant detestation of political
oppression did not prevent him from deprecating
the smallest approach to similar crimes on the
part of his own party, and he abjured revenge and
retaliation, while he strenuously advocated reform.
He felt assured that there would be a change for
the better in our institutions ; he feared bloodshed,
he feared the ruin of many. Wedded as he was
to the cause of public good, he would have hailed
the changes that since his time have so signally
ameliorated our institutions and opinions, each
acting on the other, and which still, we may hope,

VOL. I. h

PREFACE.

are proceeding towards the establishment of that
hberty and toleration which he worshipped. " The
thing to fear," he observes, "will be, that the
change should proceed too fast — it must be gradual
to be secure.""

I do not conceal that I am far from satisfied
with the tone in which the criticisms on Shelley
are written. Some among these writers praise the
poetry with enthusiasm, and even discrimination ;
but none understand the man. I hope these
volumes will set him in a juster point of view. If
it be alleged in praise of Goethe that he was an
artist as well as a poet ; that his principles of compo-
sition, his theories of wisdom and virtue, and the
ends of existence, rested on a noble and secure
basis ; not less does that praise belong to Shelley.
His Defence of Poetry is alone sufficient to prove
that his views were, in every respect, congruous and
complete ; his faith in good firm, his respect for
his fellow-creatures unimpaired by the wrongs he
suffered. Every word of his letters displays that
modesty, that forbearance, and mingled meekness
and resolution that, in my mind, form the per-
fection of man. " Gentle, brave, and generous,"
he describes the Poet in Alastor : such he was

PREFACE. XXVll

himself, beyond any man I have ever known. To
these admirable qualities were added, his genius ;
his keen insight into human motive — as his
theory of morals, which, based on a knowledge of
his kind, was perspicuous, subtle, comprehensive,
and just ; the pure and lofty enthusiasm with
which he regarded the improvement of his own
species. He had but one defect — which was
his leaving his life incomplete by an early death.

0 that the serener hopes of maturity, the happier
contentment of mid-life, had descended on his
dear head, to calm the turbulence of youth-
ful impetuosity — that he had lived to see his
country advance towards freedom, and to enrich
the world with his own virtues and genius in their
completion of experience and power ! When I
think that such things might have been, and of my
own share in such good and happiness ; the pang
occasioned by his loss can never pass away — and

1 gain resignation only by believing that he was
spared much suffering, and that he has passed into
a sphere of being, better adapted to his inexpres-
sible tenderness, his generous sympathies, and
his richly gifted mind. That, free from the physical
pain to which he was a martyr, and unshackled by

XXVlll PREFACE.

the fleshly bars and imperfect senses which hedged
him in on earth, he enjoys beauty, and good, and
love there, where those to whom he was united on
earth by various ties of affection, sympathy, and
admiration, may hope to join him.

Putney,

December, 1839. .;

" That thou, O my Brother, impart to me truly how it stands

with thee in that inner man of thine ; what lively images of things

past thy memory has painted there ; what hopes, what thoughts,

affections, knowledge, do now dwell there. For this, and no other

object that I can see, was the gift of hearing and speech bestowed

on us two."

Thomas Carlyle.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

PAGE

A DEFENCE OF POETRY 1

ESSAY ON THE LITERATURE, ARTS, AND MANNERS

OF THE ATHENIANS— A FRAGMENT . . . 58

PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO . . .70

THE BANQUET— TRANSLATED FROM PLATO . . 73

ON LOVE 164

THE COLISEUM— A FRAGMENT 168

THE ASSASSINS -FRAGMENT OF A ROMANCE . 182

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH . . . .212

ON LIFE 223

ON A FUTURE STATE 231

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS.

I. THE MIND ........ 240

II. WHAT METAPHYSICS ARE ERROUS IN THE USUAL METHODS

OF CONSIDERING THEM . . . . . . 245

III. DIFFICULTY OF ANALYSING THE HUMAN MIND . . 246

IV. HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON . . 247
V. CATALOGUE OF THE PHENOMENA OF DREAMS . . 248

XXXU CONTENTS.

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. page

I. PLAN OF A TREATISE ON MORALS . . . 252

II. MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE DIFFER-
ENCE, NOT THE RESEMBLANCE, OF PERSONS . . 268

ION; OR, OF THE ILIAD— TRANSLATED FROM

PLATO 273

MENEXENUS,— OR THE FUNERAL ORATION— A

FRAGMENT 299

FRAGMENTS FROM THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO . 305

ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO 318

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

PART I.

According to one mode of regarding those two
classes of mental action, which are called reason
and imagination, the former may be considered as
mind contemplating the relations borne by one
thought to another, however produced ; and the
latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts so as
to colour them with its own light, and composing
from them as from elements, other thoughts, each
containing within itself the principle of its own
integrity. The one is the to ttol€lv, or the principle
of synthesis, and has for its object those forms
which are common to universal nature and exist-
ence itself ; the other is the rb Aoyt^eiz^, or principle
of analysis, and its action regards the relations of
things, simply as relations ; considering thoughts,
not in their integral unity, but as the algebraical

VOL. I. B

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

representations which conduct to certain general
results. Reason is the enumeration of quantities
already known ; imagination is the perception of the
value of those quantities, both separately and as a
whole. Reason respects the differences, and ima-
gination the similitudes of things. Reason is to
imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the
body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.
Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be
" the expression of the imagination :" and poetry
is connate with the origin of man. Man is an
instrument over which a series of external and
internal impressions are driven, like the alterna-
tions of an ever-changing wind over an ^olian
lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-chang-
ing melody. But there is a principle within the
human being, and perhaps within all sentient
beings, which acts otherwise than in a lyre, and
produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an
internal adjustment of the sounds and motions
thus excited to the impressions which excite them.
It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to
the motions of that which strikes them, in a deter-
mined proportion of sound ; even as the musician
can accommodate his voice to the sound of the
lyre. A child at play by itself will express its
delight by its voice and motions; and every

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 3

inflexion of tone and gesture will bear exact rela-
tion to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable
impressions which awakened it ; it will be the
reflected image of that impression ; and as the
lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died
away, so the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice
and motions the duration of the effect, to prolong
also a consciousness of the cause. In relation to
the objects which delight a child, these expressions
are what poetry is to higher objects. The savage
(for the savage is to ages what the child is to
years) expresses the emotions produced in him by
surrounding objects in a similar manner ; and
language and gesture, together with plastic or
pictorial imitation, become the image of the com-
bined effect of those objects and his apprehension
of them. Man in society, with all his passions
and his pleasures, next becomes the object of the
passions and pleasures of man ; an additional class
of emotions produces an augmented treasure of
expression; and language, gesture, and the imitative
arts, become at once the representation and the
medium, the pencil and the picture, the chisel and
the statue, the chord and the harmony. The
social sympathies, or those laws from which as from
its elements society results, begin to develop them-
selves from the moment that two human beings
b2

A DEFEXCE OF POETRY.

coexist ; the future is contained within the present
as the plant within the seed ; and equahty, diversity,
unity, contrast, mutual dependence, become the
principles alone capable of affording the motives
according to which the will of a social being is
determined to action, inasmuch as he is social ;
and constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue in
sentiment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and
love in the intercourse of kind. Hence men, even
in the infancy of society, observe a certain order
in their words and actions, distinct from that of
the objects and the impressions represented by
them, all expression being subject to the laws of
that from which it proceeds. But let us dismiss
those more general considerations which might
involve an inquiry into the principles of society
itself, and restrict our view to the manner in which
the imagination is expressed upon its forms.

In the youth of the world, men dance and sing
and imitate natural objects, observing in these
actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm or order.
And, although all men observe a similar, they
observe not the same order, in the motions of the
dance, in the melody of the song, in the combina-
tions of language, in the series of their imitations
of natural objects. For there is a certain order or
rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

representation, from which the hearer and the
spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure
than from any other: the sense of an approximation
to this order has been called taste by modern
writers. Every man in the infancy of art, observes
an order which approximates more or less closely
to that from which this highest delight results :
but the diversity is not sufficiently marked, as that
its gradations should be sensible, except in those
instances where the predominance of this faculty
of approximation to the beautiful (for so we may
be permitted to name the relation between this
highest pleasure and its cause) is very great.
Those in whom it exists to excess are poets, in the
most universal sense of the word ; and the pleasure
resulting from the manner in which they express
the influence of society or nature upon their own
minds, communicates itself to others, and gathers a
sort of reduplication from the community. Their
language is vitally metaphorical ; that is, it marks
the before unapprehended relations of things and
perpetuates their apprehension, until words, which
represent them, become, through time, signs for
portions or classes of thought, instead of pictures
of integral thoughts ; and then, if no new poets
should arise to create afresh the associations which
have been thus disorganised, language will be

0 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

dead to all the nobler purposes of human inter-
course. These similitudes or relations are finely-
said by Lord Bacon to be " the same footsteps of
nature impressed upon the various subjects of the
world*" — and he considers the faculty which per-
ceives them as the storehouse of axioms common
to all knowledge. In the infancy of society every
author is necessarily a poet, because language itself
is poetry ; and to be a poet is to apprehend the
true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which
exists in the relation; subsisting, first between
existence and perception, and secondly between
perception and expression. Every original lan-
guage near to its source is in itself the chaos of a
cyclic poem : the copiousness of lexicography and
the distinctions of grammar are the works of a
later age, and are merely the catalogue and the
form of the creations of poetry.

But poets, or those who imagine and express
this indestructible order, are not only the authors
of language and of music, of the dance, and archi-
tecture, and statuary, and painting ; they are the
insiitutors of laws and the founders of civil society,
and the inventors of the arts of life, and the
teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with
the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehen-

* De Augment. Scient., cap. 1, lib, iii.

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 7

sion of the agencies of the invisible world which is
called religion. Hence all original religions are
allegorical or susceptible of allegory, and, like
Janus, have a double face of false and true.
Poets, according to the circumstances of the age
and nation in which they appeared, were called,
in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators or
prophets : a poet essentially comprises and unites
both these characters. For he not only beholds
intensely the present as it is, and discovers those
laws according to which present things ought to be
ordered, but he beholds the future in the present,
and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the
fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be
prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that
they can foretell the form as surely as they fore-
know the spirit of events : such is the pretence of
superstition, which would make poetry an attribute
of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of
poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the
infinite, and the one ; as far as relates to his con-
ceptions, time and place and number are not. The
grammatical forms which express the moods of
time, and the difference of persons, and the dis-
tinction of place, are convertible with respect to
the highest poetry without injuring it as poetry ;
and the choruses of ^schylus, and the book of Job,

8 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

and Dante'*s Paradise, would afford, more than any
other writings, examples of this fact, if the limits of
this essay did not forbid citation. The creations
of sculpture, painting, and music, are illustrations
still more decisive.

Language, colour, form, and religious and civil
habits of action, are all the instruments and
materials of poetry ; they may be called poetry by
that figure of speech which considers the effect as
a synonyme of the cause. But poetry in a more
restricted sense expresses those arrangements of
language, and especially metrical language, which
are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne
is curtained within the invisible nature of man.
And this springs from the nature itself of language,
which is a more direct representation of the actions
and passions of our internal being, and is suscepti-
ble of more various and delicate combinations, than
colour, form, or motion, and is more plastic and
obedient to the control of that faculty of which it
is the creation. For language is arbitrarily pro-
duced by the imagination, and has relation to
thoughts alone; but all other materials, instru-
ments, and conditions of art, have relations among
each other, which limit and interpose between
conception and expression. The former is as a
mirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

enfeebles, the light of which both are mediums
of communication. Hence the fame of sculptors,
painters, and musicians, although the intrinsic
powers of the great masters of these arts may
yield in no degree to that of those who have
employed language as the hieroglyphic of their
thoughts, has never equalled that of poets in the
restricted sense of the term ; as two performers
of equal skill will produce unequal effects from a
guitar and a harp. The fame of legislators and
founders of religion, so long as their institutions
last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the
restricted sense ; but it can scarcely be a question,
whether, if we deduct the celebrity which their
flattery of the gross opinions of the vulgar usually
conciliates, together with that which belonged to
them in their higher character of poets, any excess
will remain.

We have thus circumscribed the word poetry
within the limits of that art which is the most
familiar and the most perfect expression of the
faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make
the circle still narrower, and to determine the
distinction between measured and unmeasured
language ; for the popular division into prose and
verse is inadmissible in accurate philosophy.

Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both
b3

10 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

between each other and towards that which they
represent, and a perception of the order of those
relations has always been found connected with a
perception of the order of the relations of thought.
Hence the language of poets has ever affected a
sort of uniform and harmonious recurrence of
sound, without which it were not poetry, and which
ie scarcely less indispensable to the communication
of its influence, than the words themselves, without
reference to that peculiar order. Hence the vanity
of translation ; it were as wise to cast a violet into
a crucible that you might discover the formal prin-
ciple of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse
from one language into another the creations of a
poet. The plant must spring again from its seed,
or it will bear no flower — and this is the burthen of
the curse of BabeL

An observation of the regular mode of the recur-
rence of harmony in the language of poetical minds,
together with its relation to music, produced metre,
or a certain system of traditional forms of harmony
and language. Yet it is by no means essential that
a poet should accommodate his language to this
traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its
spirit, be observed. The practice is indeed con-
venient and popular, and to be preferred, especially
in such composition as includes much action : but

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 11

every great poet must inevitably innovate upon
the example of his predecessors in the exact
structure of his peculiar versification. The distinc-
tion between poets and prose writers is a vulgar
error. The distinction between philosophers and
poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially
a poet— the truth and splendour of his imagery,
and the melody of his language, are the most intense
that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the
harmony of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms,
because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts
divested of shape and action, and he forbore to
invent any regular plan of rhythm which would
include, under determinate forms, the varied pauses
of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence
of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon
was a poet*. His language has a sweet and
majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less
than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philo-
sophy satisfies the intellect ; it is a strain which
distends, and then bursts the circumference of the
reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with
it into the universal element with which it has
perpetual sympathy. All the authors of revolutions
in opinion are not only necessarily poets as they
are inventors, nor even as their words unveil the

* See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the Essay on Death particularly.

12 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

permanent analogy of things by images which
participate in the Hfe of truth ; but as their periods
are harmonious and rhythmical, and contain in
themselves the elements of verse ; being the echo
of the eternal music. Nor are those supreme
poets, who have employed traditional forms of
rhythm on account of the form and action of their
subjects, less capable of perceiving and teaching the
truth of things, than those who have omitted that
form. Shakspeare, Dante, and Milton (to confine
ourselves to modern writers) are philosophers of
the very loftiest power.

A poem is the very image of life expressed in its
eternal truth. There is this difference between a
story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of
detached facts, which have no other connexion than
time, place, circumstance, cause, and effect ; the
other is the creation of actions according to the
unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in
the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image
of all other minds. The one is partial, and applies
only to a definite period of time, and a certain com-
bination of events which can never again recur ; the
other is universal, and contains within itself the
germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions
have place in the possible varieties of human nature.
Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of the

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

13

story of particular facts, stripped of the poetry
which should invest them, augments that of poetry,
and for ever develops new and wonderful applica-
tions of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence
epitomes have been called the moths of just history;
they eat out the poetry of it. A story of particular
facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts
that which should be beautiful : poetry is a mirror
which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

The parts of a composition may be poetical,
without the composition as a whole being a poem.
A single sentence may be considered as a whole,
though it may be found in the midst of a series of
unassimilated portions ; a single word even may be
a spark of inextinguishable thought. And thus all
the great historians, Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy,
were poets ; and although the plan of these writers,
especially that of Livy, restrained them from de-
veloping this faculty in its highest degree, they
made copious and ample amends for their subjec-
tion, by filling all the interstices of their subjects
with living images.

Having determined what is poetry, and who are
poets, let us proceed to estimate its effects upon
society.

Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure : all
spirits upon which it falls open themselves to re-

14 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

ceive the wisdom which is mingled with its dehght.
In the infancy of the world, neither poets them-
selves nor their auditors are fully aware of the
excellence of poetry : for it acts in a divine and
unapprehended manner, beyond and above con-
sciousness ; and it is reserved for future genera-
tions to contemplate and measure the mighty cause
and effect in all the strength and splendour of
their union. Even in modern times, no living poet
ever arrived at the fullness of his fame ; the jury
which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as
he does to all time, must be composed of his peers :
it must be empannelled by time from the selectest
of the wise of many generations. A poet is a
nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer
its own solitude with sweet sounds ; his auditors
are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen
musician, who feel that they are moved and soft-
ened, yet know not whence or why. The poems
of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight
of infant Greece ; they were the elements of that
social system which is the column upon which all
succeeding civilisation has reposed. Homer em-
bodied the ideal perfection of his age in human
character ; nor can we doubt that those who read
his verses were awakened to an ambition of becom-
ing like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses : the

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 15

truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and
persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled
to their depths in these immortal creations : the
sentiments of the auditors must have been refined
and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and
lovely impersonations, until from admiring they
imitated, and from imitation they identified them-
selves with the objects of their admiration. Nor
let io be objected, that these characters are remote
from moral perfection, and that they are by no
means to be considered as edifying patterns for
general imitation. Every epoch, under names
more or less specious, has deified its peculiar errors ;
Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a
semibarbarous age ; and Self-deceit is the veiled
image of unknown evil, before which luxury and
satiety lie prostrate. But a poet considers the
vices of his contemporaries as the temporary dress
in which his creations must be arrayed, and which
cover without concealing the eternal proportions
of their beauty. An epic or dramatic personage
is understood to wear them around his soul, as he
may the ancient armour or modern uniform around
his body ; whilst it is easy to conceive a dress
more graceful than either. The beauty of the
internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its
accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form
4

16 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and
indicate the shape it hides from the manner in
which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful
motions will express themselves through the most
barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of
the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty
of their conceptions in its naked truth and splen-
dour ; and it is doubtful whether the alloy of cos-
tunle, habit, &c., be not necessary to temper this
planetary music for mortal ears.

The whole objection, however, of the immorahty
of poetry rests upon a misconception of the manner
in which poetry acts to produce the moral im-
provement of man. Ethical science arranges the
elements which poetry has created, and propounds
schemes and proposes examples of civil and do-
mestic life : nor is it for want of admirable doc-
trines that men hate, and despise, and censure,
and deceive, and subjugate one another. But
poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It
awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering
it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended
combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil
from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes
familiar objects be as if they were not familiar ; it
reproduces all that it represents, and the imper-
sonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thence-

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 17

forward in the minds of those who have once
contemplated, them, as memorials of that gentle
and exalted content which extends itself over all
thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The
great secret of morals is love ; or a going out of
our own nature, and an identification of ourselves
with the beautiful which exists in thought, action,
or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly
good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively ;
he must put himself in the place of another and of
many others ; the pains and pleasures of his spe-
cies must become his own. The great instrument
of moral good is the imagination ; and poetry ad-
ministers to the effect by acting upon the cause.
Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagina-
tion by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new
delight, which have the power of attracting and
assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts,
and- which form new intervals and interstices whose
void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strength-
ens the faculty which is the organ of the moral
nature of man, in the same manner as exercise
strengthens a limb. A poet therefore would do
ill to embody his own conceptions of right and
wrong, which are usually those of his place and
time, in his poetical creations, which participate in
neither. By this assumption of the inferior office

/^

18 A DEFENCE OP POETRY.

of interpreting the effect, in which perhaps after
all he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he
would resign a glory in the participation of the
cause. There was little danger that Homer, or
any of the eternal poets, should have so far mis-
understood themselves as to have abdicated this
throne of their widest dominion. Those in whom
the poetical faculty, though great, is less intense,
as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have fre-
quently affected a moral aim, and the effect of their
poetry is diminished in exact proportion to the
degree in which they compel us to advert to this
purpose.

Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a
certain interval by the dramatic and lyrical poets
of Athens, who flourished contemporaneously with
all that is most perfect in the kindred expressions
of the poetical faculty ; architecture, painting,
music, the dance, sculpture, philosophy, and we
may add, the forms of civil life. For although the
scheme of Athenian society was deformed by many
imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry
and Christianity has erased from the habits and
institutions of modern Europe ; yet never at any
other period has so much energy, beauty and virtue,
been developed ; never was blind strength and
stubborn form so disciplined and rendered subject

A DEFENCE OP POETRY. 19

to the will of man, or that will less repugnant to
the dictates of the beautiful and the true, as
during the century which preceded the death of
Socrates. Of no other epoch in the history of our
species have we records and fragments stamped
so visibly with the image of the divinity in man.
But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, and in
language, which has rendered this epoch memorable
above all others, and the storehouse of examples
to everlasting time. For written poetry existed
at that epoch simultaneously with the other arts,
and it is an idle inquiry to demand which gave and
which received the light, which all, as from a com-
mon focus, have scattered over the darkest periods
of succeeding time. We know no more of cause
and effect than a constant conjunction of events :
poetry is ever found to co-exist with whatever other
arts contribute to the happiness and perfection of
man. I appeal to what has already been esta-
blished to distinguish between the cause and the
effect.

It was at the period here adverted to, that the
diama had its birth ; and however a succeeding
writer may have equalled or surpassed those few
great specimens of the Athenian drama which have
been preserved to us, it is indisputable that the
art itself never was understood or practised accord-

7<

20 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

ing to the true philosophy of it, as at Athens. For
the Athenians employed language, action, music,
painting, the dance, and religious institutions, to
produce a common effect in the representation of
the highest idealisms of passion and of power ;
each division in the art was made perfect in its
kind by artists of the most consummate skill, and
was disciplined into a beautiful proportion and
unity one towards the other. On the modern
stage a few only of the elements capable of express-
ing the image of the poet's conception are em-
ployed at once. We have tragedy without music
and dancing ; and music and dancing without the
highest impersonations of which they are the fit
accompaniment, and both without religion and
solemnity. Religious institution has indeed been
usually banished from the stage. Our system of
divesting the actor's face of a mask, on which the
many expressions appropriated to his dramatic
character might be moulded into one permanent
and unchanging expression, is favourable only to a
partial and inharmonious effect ; it is fit for nothing
but a monologue, where all the attention may be
directed to some great master of ideal mimicry.
The modern practice of blending comedy with
tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of
practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the dra-

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 21

matic circle ; but the comedy should be as in King
Lear, universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps
the intervention of this principle which determines
the balance in favour of King Lear against the
CEdipus Tyrannu^ or the Agamemnon, or, if you
will, the trilogies with which they are connected ;
unless the intense power of the choral poetry, es-
pecially that of the latter, should be considered as
restoring the equilibrium. King Lear, if it can
sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the
most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing
in the world ; in spite of the narrow conditions to
which the poet was subjected by the ignorance of
the philosophy of the drama which has prevailed
in modern Europe. Calderon, in his religious
Autos, has attempted to fulfil some of the high
conditions of dramatic representation neglected by
Shakspeare ; such as the establishing a relation
between the drama and religion, and the accom-
modating them to music and dancing ; but he
omits the observation of conditions still more im-
portant, and more is lost than gained by the^ub-
stitution of the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated
idealisms of a distorted superstition for the living
impersonations of the truth of human passions.

But I digress. — The connexion of scenic exhibi-
tions with the improvement or corruption of the

22 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

manners of men, has been universally recognised :
in other words, the presence or absence of poetry
in its most perfect and universal form, has been
found to be connected with good and evil in con-
duct or habit. The corruption which has been
imputed to the drama as an effect, begins, when
the poetry employed in its constitution ends : I
appeal to the history of manners whether the periods
of the growth of the one and the decline of the
other have not corresponded with an exactness
equal to any example of moral cause and effect.

The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it
may have approached to its perfection, ever co-
existed with the moral and intellectual greatness
of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian poets
are as mirrors in which the spectator beholds him-
self, under a thin disguise of circumstance, stript
of all but that ideal perfection and energy which
every one feels to be the internal type of all that
he loves, admires, and would become. The ima-
gination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and
passions so mighty, that they distend in their con-
ception the capacity of that by which they are
conceived, the good affections are strengthened by
pity, indignation, terror and sorrow; and an exalted
calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high
exercise of them into tlie tumult of familiar life :

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 23

even crime is disarmed of half its horror and all
its contagion by being represented as the fatal con-
sequence of the unfathomable agencies of nature ;
error is thus divested of its wilfulness ; men can
no longer cherish it as the creation of their choice.
In the drama of the highest order there is little
food for censure or hatred ; it teaches rather self-
knowledge and self-respect. Neither the eye nor
the mind can see itself, unless reflected upon that
which it resembles. The drama, so long as it con-
tinues to express poetry, is a prismatic and many-
sided mirror, which collects the brightest rays of
human nature and divides and reproduces them
from the simplicity of these elementary forms, and
touches them with majesty and beauty, and mul-
tiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with the
power of propagating its like wherever it may fall.
But in periods of the decay of social hfe, the
drama sympathises with that decay. Tragedy
becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great
masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all harmo-
nious accompaniment of the kindred arts; and
often the very form misunderstood, or a weak
attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer
considers as moral truths ; and which are usually
no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice
or weakness, with which the author, in common witli

24 A db:fence of poetry,

his auditors, are infected. Hence what has been
called the classical and domestic drama. Addi-
son*'s " Cato" is a specimen of the one ; and would
it were not superfluous to cite examples of the
other ! To such purposes poetry cannot be made
subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever
unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that
would contain it. And thus we observe that all
dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative
in a singular degree ; they affect sentiment and
passion, which, divested of imagination, are other
names for caprice and appetite. The period in
our own history of the grossest degradation of the
drama is the reign of Charles II., when all forms
in which poetry had been accustomed to be ex-
pressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly
power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone
illuminating an age unworthy of him. At such
periods the calculating principle pervades all the
forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to
be expressed upon them. Comedy loves its ideal
universality : wit succeeds to humour ; we laugh
from self-complacency and triumph, instead of plea-
sure ; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt, succeed
to sympathetic merriment ; we hardly laugh, but
we smile. Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy
against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the

A DEFENCE OP POETRY. ^5

very veil which it assumes, more active if less dis-
gusting : it is a monster for which the corruption
of society for ever brings forth new food, which it
devours in secret.

The drama being that form under which a greater
number of modes of expression of poetry are sus-
ceptible of being combined than any other, the
connexion of poetry and social good is more ob-
servable in the drama than in whatever other form.
And it is indisputable that the highest perfection
of human society has ever corresponded with the
highest dramatic excellence ; and that the corrup-
tion or the extinction of the drama in a nation
where it has once flourished, is a mark of a corrup-
tion of manners, and an extinction of the energies
which sustain the soul of social life. But, as
Machiavelli says of political institutions, that life
may 'be preserved and renewed, if men should arise
capable of bringing back the drama to its princi-
ples. And this is true with respect to poetry in /
its most extended sense : all language, institution
and form, require not only to be produced but to
be sustained : the office and character of a poet
participates in the divine nature as regards provi-
dence, no less than as regards creation.

Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal pre-
dominance first of the Macedonian, and then of

VOL. I. e

26

A DEFEN'CE OF POETRY.

the Roman arms, were so many symbols of the
extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in
Greece. The bucolic writers, who found patronage
under the lettered tyrants of Sicily and Egypt,
were the latest representatives of its most glorious
reign. Their poetry is intensely melodious ; like
the odour of the tuberose, it overcomes and sickens
the spirit with excess of sweetness ; whilst the
poetry of the preceding age was as a meadow-gale
of June, which mingles the fragrance of all the
flowers of the field, and adds a quickening and
harmonising spirit of its own which endows the
sense with a power of sustaining its extreme de-
light. The bucolic and erotic delicacy in written
poetry is correlative with that softness in statuary,
music, and the kindred arts, and even in manners
and institutions, which distinguished the epoch to
which I now refer. Nor is it the poetical faculty
itself, or any misapplication of it, to which this
want of harmony is to be imputed. An equal sen-
sibility to the influence of the senses and the affec-
tions is to be found in the writings of Homer and
Sophocles : the former, especially, has clothed sen-
sual and pathetic images with irresistible attrac-
tions. The superiority in these.to succeeding writers
consists in the presence of those thoughts which
belong to the inner faculties of our nature, not in

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 27

the absence of those which are connected with the
external : their incomparable perfection consists
in a harmony of the union of all. It is not what
the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in
which their imperfection consists. It is not inas-
much as they were poets, but inasmuch as they
were not poets, that they can be considered with
any plausibility as connected with the corruption of
their age. Had that corruption availed so as to
extinguish in them the sensibility to pleasure, pas-
sion, and natural scenery, which is imputed to them
as an imperfection, the last triumph of evil would
have been achieved. For the end of social corrup-
tion is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure ; and,
therefore, it is corruption. It begins at the ima-
gination and the intellect as at the core, and distri-
butes itself thence as a paralysing venom, through
the affections into the very appetites, until all be-
come a torpid mass in which hardly sense survives.
At the approach of such a period, poetry ever ad-
dresses itself to those faculties which are the last
to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the
footsteps of Astrsea, departing from the world.
Poetry ever communicates all the pleasure which
men are capable of receiving : it is ever still the
hght of hfe ; the source of whatever of beautiful
or generous or true can have place in an evil time.
c2

28 A DEFENCE OF PaETRY.

It will readily be confessed that those among the
luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who
were delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were
less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of
their tribe. But corruption must utterly have
destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry
can ever cease. The sacred links of that chain
have never been entirely disjoined, which descend-
ing through the minds of many men is attached to
those great minds, whence as from a magnet the
invisible effluence is sent forth, which at once con-
nects, animates, and sustains the life of all. It is
the faculty which contains within itself the seeds
at once of its own and of social renovation. And
let us not circumscribe the effects of the bucolic
and erotic poetry within the limits of the sensibi-
lity of those to whom it was addressed. They
may have perceived the beauty of those immortal
compositions, simply as fragments and isolated
portions : those who are more finely organised, or
born in a happier age, may recognise them as epi-
sodes to that great poem, which all poets, like the
co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have
built up since the beginning of the world.

The same revolutions within a narrower sphere
had place in ancient Rome ; but the actions and
forms of its social life never seem to have been

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 29

perfectly saturated with the poetical element. The
Romans appear to have considered the Greeks as
the selectest treasuries of the selectest forms of
manners and of nature, and to have abstained from
creating in measured language, sculpture, music,
or architecture, any thing which might bear a par-
ticular relation to their own condition, whilst it
should bear a general one to the universal consti-
tution of the world. But v/e judge from partial
evidence, and we judge perhaps partially. Ennius,
Varro, Pacuvius, and Accius, all great poets, have
been lost. Lucretius is in the highest, and Virgil
in a very high sense, a creator. The chosen deli-
cacy of expressions of the latter, are as a mist of
light which conceal from us the intense and exceed-
ing truth of his conceptions of nature. Livy is
instinct with poetry. Yet Horace, Catullus, Ovid,
and generally the other great writers of the Vir-
gilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of
Greece. The institutions also, and the religion of
Rome, were less poetical than those of Greece, as
the shadow is less vivid than the substance. Hence
poetry in Rome,seeraed to follow, rather than accom-
pany, the perfection of political and domestic society.
The true poetry of Rome lived in its institutions ;
for whatever of beautiful, true, and majestic, they
contained, could have sprung only from the faculty

30 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

which creates the order in which they consist.
The Hfe of Caraillus, the death of Regulus ; the
expectation of the senators, in their godhke state,
of the victorious Gauls ; the refusal of the republic
to make peace with Hannibal, after the battle of
Cannae, were not the consequences of a refined
calculation of the probable personal advantage to
result from such a rhythm and order in the shows
of life, to those who were at once the poets and
the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagi-
nation beholding the beauty of this order, created
it out of itself according to its own idea ; the con-
sequence was empire, and the reward everlasting
fame. These things are not the less poetry, quia
carent vate sacro. They are the episodes of that
cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of
men. The Past, Hke an inspired rhapsodist, fills
the theatre of everlasting generations with their
harmony.

At length the ancient system of religion and
manners had fulfilled the circle of its evolutions.
And the world would have fallen into utter anarchy
and darkness, but that there were found poets
among the authors of the Christian and chivalric
systems of manners and religion, who created forms
of opinion and action never before conceived ;
which, copied into the imaginations of men, became

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 31

as generals to the bewildered armies of their
thoughts. It is foreign to the present purpose to
touch upon the evil produced by these systems :
except that we protest, on the ground of the
principles already established, that no portion of
it can be attributed to the poetry they contain.

It is probable that the poetry of Moses, Job,
David, Solomon, and Isaiah, had produced a great
effect upon the mind of Jesus and his disciples.
The scattered fragments preserved to us by the
biographers of this extraordinary person, are all
instinct with the most vivid poetry. But his doc-
trines seem to have been quickly distorted. At a
certain period after the prevalence of a system of
opinions founded upon those promulgated by him,
the three forms into which Plato had distributed
the faculties of mind underwent a sort of apothe-
osis, and became the object of the worship of the
civilised world. Here it is to be confessed that
'• Light seems to thicken," and

" The crow makes wing to the rooky wood,
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
And night's black agents to their preys so roude." €fL/^ *^

But mark how beautiful an order has sprung from
the dust and blood of this fierce chaos ! how the
world, as from a resurrection, balancing itself on
the golden wings of knowledge and of hope, has

32

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

reassumed its yet unwearied flight into the heaven
of time. Listen to the music, unheard by outward
ears, which is as a ceaseless and invisible wind,
nourishing its everlasting course with strength and
swiftness.

The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and
the mythology and institutions of the Celtic con-
querors of the Roman empire, outhved the dark-
ness and the convulsions connected with their
growth and victory, and blended themselves in a
new fabric of manners and opinion. It is an error
to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to the
Christian doctrines or the predominance of the
Celtic nations. Whatever of evil their agencies
may have contained sprang from the extinction of
the poetical principle, connected with the progress
of despotism and superstition. Men, from causes
too intricate to be here discussed, had become
insensible and selfish : their own will had become
feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence
the slaves of the will of others : but fear, avarice,
cruelty, and fraud, characterised a race amongst
whom no one was to be found capable of creating
in form, language, or institution. The moral ano-
malies of such a state of society are not justly to
be charged upon any class of events immediately
connected with them, and those events are most

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 33

entitled to our approbation which could dissolve it
most expeditiously. It is unfortunate for those
who cannot distinguish words from thoughts, that
many of these anomalies have been incorporated
into our popular religion.

It was not until the eleventh century that the
effects of the poetry of the Christian and chivalric
systems began to manifest themselves. The prin-
ciple of equality had been discovered and applied
by Plato in his Republic, as the theoretical rule of
the mode in which the materials of pleasure and of
power produced by the common skill and labour of
human beings ought to be distributed among them.
The limitations of this rule were asserted by him to
be determined only by the sensibility of each, or the
utility to result to all. Plato, following the doc-
trines of Timseus and Pythagoras, taught also a
moral and intellectual system of doctrine, compre-
hending at once the past, the present, and the
future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged
the sacred and eternal truths contained in these
views to mankind, and Christianity, in its abstract
purity, became the exoteric expression of the eso-
teric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of anti-
quity. The incorporation of the Celtic nations
with the exhausted population of the south, im-
pressed upon it the figure of the poetry existing in
c 3

34 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

their mythology and institutions. The result was
a sum of the action and reaction of all the causes
included in it ; for it may be assumed as a maxim
that no nation or religion can supersede any other
without incorporating into itself a portion of that
which it supersedes. The abolition of personal
and domestic slavery, and the emancipation of
women from a great part of the degrading restraints
of antiquity, were among the consequences of these
events.

The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of
the highest political hope that it can enter into the
mind of man to conceive. The freedom of women
produced the poetry of sexual love. Love became
a religion, the idols of whose worship were ever
present. It was as if the statues of Apollo and
the Muses had been endowed with hfe and motion,
and had walked forth among their worshippers ; so
that earth became peopled by the inhabitants of a
diviner world. The familiar appearance and pro-
ceedings of life became wonderful and heavenly,
and a paradise was created as out of the wrecks of
Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its
creators were poets ; and language was the instru-
ment of their art : " Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo
crisse." The Proven9al Trouveurs, or inventors,
preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells,

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 35

which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the
deHght which is in the grief of love. It is impos-
sible to feel them without becoming a portion of
that beauty which we contemplate : it were super-
uous to explain how the gentleness and elevation
of mind connected with these sacred emotions can
render men more amiable, more generous and wise,
and lift them out of the dull vapours of the little
world of self. Dante understood the secret things
of love even more than Petrarch. His Vita Nuova
is an inexhaustible fountain of purity of sentiment
and language : it is the idealised history of that
period, and those intervals of his life which were
dedicated to love. His apotheosis of Beatrice in
Paradise, and the gradations of his own love and
her loveliness, by which as by steps he feigns him-
self to have ascended to the throne of the Supreme
Cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern
poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed
the judgment of the vulgar, and the order of the
great acts of the " Divina Commedia," in the
measure of the admiration which they accord to the
Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a
perpetual hymn of everlasting love. Love, which
found a worthy poet in Plato alone of all the
ancients, has been celebrated by a chorus of the
greatest writers of the renovated world ; and the

36

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

music has penetrated the caverns of society, and
its echoes still drown the dissonance of arms and
superstition. At successive intervals, Ariosto,
Tasso, Shakspeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau,
and the great writers of our own age, have cele-
brated the dominion of love, planting as it were
trophies in the human mind of that sublimest
victory over sensuality and force. The true rela-
tion borne to each other by the sexes into which
human kind is distributed, has become less mis-
understood ; and if the error which confounded
diversity with inequality of the powers of the two
sexes has been partially recognised in the opinions
and institutions of modern Europe, we owe this
great benefit to the worship of which chivalry was
the law, and poets the prophets.

The poetry of Dante may be considered as the
bridge thrown over the stream of time, which unites
the modern and ancient world. The distorted
notions of invisible things which Dante and his
rival Milton have idealised, are merely the mask
and the mantle in which these great poets walk
through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a
difficult question to determine how far they were
conscious of the distinction which must have sub-
sisted in their minds between their own creeds and
that of the people. Dante at least appears to

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 37

wish to mark the full extent of it by placing
Riphseus, whom Virgil calls justissimus unus^ in
Paradise, and observing a most poetical caprice in
his distribution of rewards and punishments. And
Milton's poem contains within itself a philosophical
refutation of that system of which, by a strange
and natural antithesis, it has been a chief popular
support. Nothing can exceed the energy and
magnificence of the character of Satan as expressed
in " Paradise Lost." It is a mistake to suppose
that he could ever have been intended for the
popular personification of evil. Implacable hate,
patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of de-.
vice to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy,
these things are evil; and, although venial in a
slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant ; although
redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one
subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his
conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral
being is as far superior to his God, as one who
perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived
to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is
to one who in the cold security of undoubted
triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his
enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing
him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but
with the alleged design of exasperating him to

38 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

deserve new torments. Milton has so far violated
the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a
violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral
virtue to his god over his devil. And this bold
neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive
proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius. He
mingled as it were the elements of human nature
as colours upon a single pallet, and arranged them
in the composition of his great picture according
to the laws of epic truth, that is, according to
the laws of that principle by which a series of
actions of the external universe and of intelhgent
and ethical beings is calculated to excite the
sympathy of succeeding generations of mankind.
The Divina Commedia and Paradise Lost have
conferred upon modern mythology a systematic
form ; and when change and time shall have added
one more superstition to the mass of those which
have arisen and decayed upon the earth, commen-
tators will be learnedly employed in elucidating the
religion of ancestral Europe, only not utterly for-
gotten because it will have been stamped with the
eternity of genius.

Homer was the first and Dante the second epic
poet : that is, the second poet, the series of whose
creations bore a defined and intelligible relation to
the knowledge and sentiment and religion of the

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 39

age in which he Hved, and of the ages which
followed it : developing itself in correspondence
with their development. For Lucretius had limed
the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the
sensible world ; and Virgil, with a modesty that ill
became his genius, had affected the fame of an
imitator, even whilst he created anew all that he
copied ; and none among the flock of mock-birds,
though their notes are sweet, Apollonius Rhodius,
Quintus Calaber, Smyrnseus, Nonnus, Lucan,
Statins, or Claudian, have sought even to fulfil a
single condition of epic truth. Milton was the
third epic poet. For if the title of epic in its
highest sense be refused to the iEneid, still less can
it be conceded to the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusa-
lemme Liberata, the Lusiad, or the Fairy Queen.
Dante and Milton were both deeply penetrated
with the ancient religion of the civilized world ;
and its spirit exists in their poetry probably in the
same proportion as its forms survived in the un-
reformed worship of modern Europe. The one
preceded and the other followed the Reformation
ac almost equal intervals. Dante was the first
religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him
rather in the rudeness and acrimony, than in the
boldness of his censures, of papal usurpation.
Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe;

40

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

he created a language, in itself music and persua-
sion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms.
He was the congregator of those great spirits who
presided over the resurrection of learning ; the
Lucifer of that starry flock which in the thirteenth
century shone forth from republican Italy, as from
a heaven, into the darkness of the benighted world.
His very words are instinct with spirit ; each is
as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable
thought ; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of
their birth, and pregnant with a lightning which
has yet found no conductor. All high poetry is
infinite ; it is as the first acorn, which contained all
oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn,
and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never
exposed. A great poem is a fountain for ever over-
flowing with the waters of wisdom and delight; and
after one person and one age has exhausted pf all
its divine effluence which their peculiar relations
enable them to share, another and yet another
succeeds, and new relations are ever developed,
the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived
delight.

The age immediately succeeding to that of
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio, was characterized
by a revival of painting, sculpture, and architecture.
Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, and the

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 41

superstructure of English literature is based upon
the materials of Italian invention.

But let us not be betrayed from a defence into
a critical history of poetry and its influence on
society. Be it enough to have pointed out the
effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the
word, upon their own and all succeeding times.

But poets have been challenged to resign the
civic crown to reasoners and mechanists, on another
plea. It is admitted that the exercise of the
imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged
that that of reason is more useful. Let us examine,
as the grounds of this distinction, what is here
meant by utility. Pleasure or good, in a general
sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive
and intelligent being seeks, and in which, when
found, it acquiesces. There are two kinds of
pleasure, one durable, universal and permanent ;
the other transitory and particular. Utility may
either express the means of producing the former
or the latter. In the former sense, whatever
strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the
imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful.
But a narrower meaning may be assigned to the
word utility, confining it to express that which
banishes the importunity of the wants of our animal
nature, the surrounding men with security of life,

42

A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

the dispersing the grosser dehisions of superstition,
and the conciliating such a degree of mutual for-
bearance among men as may consist with the
motives of personal advantage.

Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this
limited sense, have their appointed office in society.
They follow the footsteps of poets, and copy the
sketches of their creations into the book of common
life. They make space, and give time. Their
exertions are of the highest value, so long as they
confine their administration of the concerns of the
inferior powers of our nature within the limits due
to the superior ones. But while the sceptic destroys
gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as
some of the French writers have defaced, the
eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations
of men. Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the
political economist combines, labour, let them be-
ware that their speculations, for want of corre-
spondence with those first principles which belong
to the imagination, do not tend, as they have in
modern England, to exasperate at once the ex-
tremes of luxury and want. They have exemplified
the saying, " To him that hath, more shall be
given ; and from him that hath not, the little that
he hath shall be taken away.'' The rich have
become richer, and the poor have become poorer ;

A DEFENCE OF POETRY, 43

and the vessel of the state is driven between the
Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.
Such are the effects which must ever flow from an
unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty.

It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest
sense ; the definition involving a number of apparent
paradoxes. For, from an inexplicable defect of
harmony in the constitution of human nature, the
pain of the inferior is frequently connected with
the pleasures of the superior portions of our being.
Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often
the chosen expressions of an approximation to the
highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction
depends on this principle ; tragedy delights by
affording a shadow of that pleasure which exists in
pain. This is the source also of the melancholy
which is inseparable from the sweetest melody.
The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the
pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying,
"It is better to go to the house of mourning than
to the house of mirth." Not that this highest
species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain.
The delight of love and friendship, the ecstacy of
the admiration of nature, the joy of the perception
and still more of the creation of poetry, is often
wholly unalloyed.

The production and assurance of pleasure in this

4-i A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

highest sense is true utihty. Those who produce
and preserve this pleasure are poets or poetical
philosophers.

The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire,
Rousseau*, and their disciples, in favour of oppressed
and deluded humanity, are entitled to the gratitude
of mankind. Yet it is easy to calculate the degree
of moral and intellectual improvement which the
world would have exhibited, had they never lived.
A little more nonsense would have been talked for
a century or two ; and perhaps a few more men,
women, and children, burnt as heretics. We might
not at this moment have been cono-ratulatino; each
other on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain.
But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what
would have been the moral condition of the world
if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccacio, Chaucer,
Shakspeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton,
had ever existed ; if Raphael and Michael Angelo
had never been born ; if the Hebrew poetry had
never been translated ; if a revival of the study of
Greek hterature had never taken place; if no
monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed
down to us ; and if the poetry of the religion of
the ancient world had been extinguished together

* Although Rousseau has been thus classed, he was essentially a
poet. The others, even Voltaire, were mere reasoners.

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 45

with its belief. The human mind could never
except by the intervention of these excitements,
have been awakened to the invention of the grosser
sciences, and that application of analytical reason-
ing to the aberrations of society, which it is now
attempted to exalt over the direct expression of
the inventive and creative faculty itself.

We have more moral, political, and historical
wisdom, than we know how to reduce into practice ;
we have more scientific and economical knowledge
than can be accommodated to the just distribution
of the produce which it multiplies. The poetrv,
in these systems of thought, is concealed by the
accumulation of facts and calculating processes.
There is no want of knowledge respecting what is
wisest and best in morals, government, and political
economy, or at least what is wiser and better than
what men now practise and endure. But we let
" I dare not wait upon I icould, like the poor cat in
the adage." We want the creative faculty to
imagine that which we know ; we want the gene-
rous impulse to act that which we imagine ; we
want the poetry of life : our calculations have
outrun conception ; we have eaten more than we
can digest. The cultivation of those sciences
which have enlarged the limits of the empire of
man over the external world, has, for want of the

46 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those
of the internal world ; and man, having enslaved
the elements, remains himself a slave. To what
but a cultivation of the mechanical arts in a degree
disproportioned to the presence of the creative
faculty, which is the basis of all knowledge, is
to be attributed the abuse of all invention for
abridging and combining labour, to the exaspera-
tion of the inequality of mankind ? From what
other cause has it arisen that the discoveries which
should have lightened, have added a weight to the
curse imposed on Adam? Poetry, and the princi-
ple of Self, of which money is the visible incarna-
tion, are the God and Mammon of the world.

The functions of the poetical faculty are twofold ;
by one it creates new materials of knowledge, and
power, and pleasure ; by the other it engenders in
the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange them
according to a certain rhythm and order, which
may be called the beautiful and the good. The
cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired
than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish
and calculating principle, the accumulation of the
materials of external life exceed the quantity of the
power of assimilating them to the internal laws of
human nature. The body has then become too
unwieldy for that which animates it.

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 4/

Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at
once the (>entre and circumference of knowledge ;
it is that which comprehends all science, and that
to which all science must be referred. It is at the
same time the root and blossom of all other systems
of thought ; it is that from which all spring, and
that which adorns all ; and that which, if blighted,
denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from
the barren world the nourishment and the succes-
sion of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect
and consummate surface and bloom of all things ;
it is as the odour and the colour of the rose to the
texture of the elements which compose it, as the
form and splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets
of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue,
love, patriotism, friendship, — what were the scenery
of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what
were our consolations on this side of the grave — and
what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did
not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal
regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation
dare not ever soar ? Poetry is not like reasoning,
a power to be exerted according to the determina-
tion of the will. A man cannot say, " I will com-
pose poetry.*''' The greatest poet even cannot say
it ; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal,
which some invisible influence, hke an inconstant

48 A DEFENCE OF POETKY.

wind, awakens to transitory brightness ; this power
arises from within, Hke the colour of a flower
which fades and changes as it is developed, and the
conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic
either of its approach or its departure. Could
this influence be durable in its original purity and
force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the
results ; but when composition begins, inspiration
is already on the decline, and the most glorious
poetry that has ever been communicated to the
world is probably a feeble shadow of the original
conceptions of the poet. I appeal to the greatest
poets of the present day, whether it is not an error
to assert that the finest passages of poetry are
produced by labour and study. The toil and the
delay recommended by critics, can be justly inter-
preted to mean no more than a careful observation
of the inspired moments, and an artificial connec-
tion of the spaces between their suggestions, by the
intertexture of conventional expressions ; a neces-
sity only imposed by the limitedness of the poetical
faculty itself: for Milton conceived the Paradise
Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions.
We have his own authority also for the muse hav-
ing "dictated"*' to him the " unpremeditated song.'"
And let this be an answer to those who would
allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 4.9

of the Orlando Furioso. Compositions so produced
are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. The
instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still
more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts :
a great statue or picture grows under the power
of the artist as a child in the mother's womb ;
and the very mind which directs the hands in
formation, is incapable of accounting to itself for
the origin, the gradations, or the media of the
process.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest
moments of the happiest and best minds. We are
aware of evanescent visitations of thought and
feeling, sometimes associated with place or person,
sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and
always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden,
but elevating and delightful beyond all expression :
so that even in the desire and the regret they
leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating
as it does in the nature of its object. It is as it were
the interpenetration of a diviner nature through
our own ; but its footsteps are like those of a wind
over the sea, which the morning calm erases, and
whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand
which paves it. These and corresponding conditions
of being are experienced principally by those of the
most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged

VOL. I. D

50 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

imagination ; and the state of mind produced by
them is at war with every base desire. The
enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friend-
ship, is essentially linked with such emotions ; and
whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom
to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these
experiences as spirits of the most refined organisa-
tion, but they can colour all that they combine
with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world ;
a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or
a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and
reanimate, in those who have ever experienced
those emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried
image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal
all that is best and most beautiful in the world ; it
arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the
interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in lan-
guage or in form, sends them forth among man-
kind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those
with whom their sisters abide — abide, because
there is no portal of expression from the caverns of
the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of
things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations
of the divinity in man.

Poetry turns all things to loveliness ; it exalts
the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it
adds beauty to that which is most deformed ; it

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 51

marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure,
eternity and change ; it subdues to union, under
its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It trans-
mutes all that it touches, and every form moving
within the radiance of its presence is changed by
wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit
which it breathes : its secret alchemy turns to
potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from
death through life ; it strips the veil of familiarity
from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleep-
ing beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.

All things exist as they are perceived ; at least
in relation to the percipient. " The mind is its
own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell,
a hell of heaven.'" But poetry defeats the curse
which binds us to be subjected to the accident of
surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads
its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's dark
veil from before the scene of things, it equally
creates for us a being within our being. It makes
us the inhabitant of a world to which the familiar
world is a chaos. It reproduces the common uni-
verse of which we are portions and percipients, and
it purges from our inward sight the film of fami-
liarity which obscures from us the wonder of our
being. It compels us to feel that which we per-
ceive, and to imagine that which we know. It
d2

52 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

creates anew the universe, after it has been annihi-
lated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions
blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and
true word of Tasso : Non merita nome di creatore,
se non Iddio ed il Poeta.

A poet, as he is the author to others of the
highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue and glory, so he
ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the
wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to his
glory, let time be challenged to declare whether
the fame of any other institutor of human life be
comparable to that of a poet. That he is the
wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he
is a poet, is equally incontrovertible : the greatest
poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of
the most consummate prudence, and, if we would
look into the interior of their lives, the most for-
tunate of men : and the exceptions, as they regard
those who possessed the poetic faculty in a high
yet inferior degree, will be found on consideration
to confirm rather than destroy the rule. Let us
for a moment stoop to the arbitration of popular
breath, and usurping and uniting in our own per-
sons the incompatible characters of accuser, wit-
ness, judge and executioner, let us decide without
trial, testimony, or form, that certain motives of
those who are " there sitting where we dare not

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 53

soar," are reprehensible. Let us assume that
Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer,
that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a
madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that
Raphael was a hbertine, that Spenser was a poet
laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of
our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has
done ample justice to the great names now referred
to. Their errors have been weighed and found to
have been dust in the balance ; if their sins " were
as scarlet, they are now white as snow :" they have
been washed in the blood of the mediator and
redeemer, time. Observe in what a ludicrous
chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime
have been confused in the contemporary calumnies
against poetry and poets ; consider how little is,
as it appears — or appears, as it is ; look to your
own motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged.

Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect
from logic, that it is not subject to the control of
the active powers of the mind, and that its birth
and recurrence have no necessary connexion with
the consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to
determine that these are the necessary conditions
of all mental causation, when mental effects are
experienced insusceptible of being referred to them.
The frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it

54 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

is obvious to suppose, may produce in the mind a
habit of order and harmony correlative with its
own nature and with its effects upon other minds.
But in the intervals of inspiration, and they may
DC frequent without being durable, a poet becomes
a man, and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of
the influences under which others habitually live.
But as he is more delicately organised than other
men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his
own and that of others, in a degree unknown to
them, he will avoid the one and pursue the other
with an ardour proportioned to this difference.
And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny, when
he neglects to observe the circumstances under
which these objects of universal pursuit and flight
have disguised themselves in one another's gar-
ments.

But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error,
and thus cruelty, envy, revenge, avarice, and the
passions purely evil, have never formed any portion
of the popular imputations on the lives of poets.

1 have thought it most favourable to the cause
of truth to set down these remarks according to
the order in which they were suggested to my
mind, by a consideration of the subject itself, instead
of observing the formality of a polemical reply ; but
if the view which they contain be just, they will be

A DEFENCE OF POETRY, 55

found to involve a refutation of the arguers against
poetry, so far at least as regards the first division
of the subject. I can readily conjecture what
should have moved the gall of some learned and
intelligent writers who quarrel with certain versi-
fiers ; I, like them, confess myself unwilling to
be stunned by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of
the day. Bavius and Msevius undoubtedly are, as
they ever were, insufferable persons. But it be-
longs to a philosophical critic to distinguish rather
than confound.

The first part of these remarks has related to
poetry in its elements and principles ; and it has
been shown, as well as the narrow limits assigned
them would permit, that what is called poetry in a
restricted sense, has a common source with all
other forms of order and of beauty, according to
which the materials of human life are susceptible
of being arranged, and which is poetry in an uni-
versal sense.

The second part will have for its object an appli-
cation of these principles to the present state of
the cultivation of poetry, and a defence of the
attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners
and opinions, and compel them into a subordina-
tion to the imaginative and creative faculty. For
the literature of England, an energetic development

56 A DEFENCE OF POETRY.

of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great
and free development of the national will, has arisen
as it were from a new birth. In spite of the low-
thoughted envy which would undervalue contem-
porary merit, our own will be a memorable age in
intellectual achievements, and we live among such
philosophers and poets as surpass beyond compa-
rison any who have appeared since the last national
struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most
unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the
awakening of a great people to work a beneficial
change in opinion or institution, is poetry. At
such periods there is an accumulation of the power
of communicating and receiving intense and im-
passioned conceptions respecting man and nature.
The persons in whom this power resides, may often,
as far as regards many portions of their nature,
have little apparent correspondence with that spirit
of good of which they are the ministers. But
even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet
compelled to serve, the power which is seated on
the throne of their own soul. It is impossible to
read the compositions of the most celebrated
writers of the present day without being startled
with the electric life which burns within their
words. They measure the circumference and sound
the depths of human nature with a comprehensive

A DEFENCE OF POETRY. 57

and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves
perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its mani-
festations ; for it is less their spirit than the spirit
of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an un-
apprehended inspiration ; the mirrors of the gigan-
tic shadows which futurity casts upon the present ;
the words which express what they understand
not ; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel
not what they inspire ; the influence which is moved
not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world.

d3

ESSAY

ON THE LITERATURE, THE ARTS, AND THE
MANNERS OF THE ATHENIANS.

^ iFragment.*

The period which intervened between the birth
of Pericles and the death of Aristotle, is undoubt-
edly, whether considered in itself, or with refer-
ence to the effects which it has produced upon the
subsequent destinies of civilised man, the most
memorable in the history of the world. What
was the combination of moral and political circum-
stances which produced so unparalleled a progress
during that period in literature and the arts ; —
why that progress, so rapid and so sustained, so
soon received a check, and became retrograde, —
are problems left to the wonder and conjecture of
posterity. The wrecks and fragments of those
subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine
statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and
perfection of the whole. Their very language — a

* Shelley named this Essay, " A Discourse on the Manners of the
Ancients, relative to the subject of Love." It was intended to be a
commentary on the Symposium, or Banquet of Plato, but it breaks off
at the moment when the main subject is about to be discussed.

ESSAY ON THE ATHENIANS. 59

type of the understandings of which it was the
creation and the image— in variety, in simplicity,
in flexibihty, and in copiousness, excels every other
language of the western world. Their sculptures
are such as we, in our presumption, assume to be the
models of ideal truth and beauty, and to which
no artist of modern times can produce forms in
any degree comparable. Their paintings, according
to Pliny and Pausanias, were full of delicacy and
harmony ; and some even were powerfully pathe-
tic, so as to awaken, like tender music or tragic
poetry, the most overwhelming emotions. We
are accustomed to conceive the painters of the
sixteenth century, as those who have brought their
art to the highest perfection, probably because
none of the ancient paintings have been preserved.
For all the inventive arts maintain, as it were, a
sympathetic connexion between each other, being
no more than various expressions of one internal
power, modified by different circumstances, either
of an individual, or of society; and the paint-
ings of that period would probably bear the same
relation as is confessedly borne by the sculp-
tures to all succeeding ones. Of their music we
know little ; but the effects which it is said to
have produced, whether they be attributed to
the skill of the composer, or the sensibility of

60 ON THE LITERATURE, ETC,

his audience, are far more powerful than any
which we experience from the music of our own
times; and if, indeed, the melody of their composi-
tions were more tender and delicate, and inspir-
ing, than the melodies of some modern European
nations, their superiority in this art must have been
something wonderful, and wholly beyond conception.
Their poetry seems to maintain a very high,
though not so disproportionate a rank, in the com-
parison. Perhaps Shakspeare, from the variety and
comprehension of his genius, is to be considered,
on the whole, as the greatest individual mind, of
which we have specimens remaining. Perhaps
Dante created imaginations of greater loveliness
and energy than any that are to be found in the
ancient literature of Greece. Perhaps nothing has
been discovered in the fragments of the Greek
lyric poets equivalent to the sublime and chi-
valric sensibiHty of Petrarch. — But, as a poet,
Homer must be acknowledged to excel Shakspeare
in the truth, the harmony, the sustained grandeur,
the satisfying completeness of his images, their
exact fitness to the illustration, and to that to which
. they belong. Nor could Dante, deficient in con-
duct, plan, nature, variety, and temperance, have
been brought into comparison with these men, but
for those fortunate isles, laden with golaen fruit,

OP THE ATHENIANS. 61

which alone could tempt any one to embark in the
misty ocean of his dark and extravagant fiction.

But, omitting the comparison of individual
minds, which can afford no general inference, how
superior was the spirit and system of their poetry
to that of any other period ! So that, had any
other genius equal in other respects to the greatest
that ever enlightened the world, arisen in that age,
he would have been superior to all, from this cir-
cumstance alone — that his conceptions would have
assumed a more harmonious and perfect form.
For it is worthy of observation, that whatever the
poets of that age produced is as harmonious and
perfect as possible. If a drama, for instance, were
the composition of a person of inferior talent, it
was still homogeneous and free from inequalities ;
it was a whole, consistent with itself. The compo-
sitions of great minds bore throughout the sus-
tained stamp of their greatness. In the poetry of
succeeding ages the expectations are often exalted
on Icarean wings, and fall, too much disappointed
to give a memory and a name to the oblivious
pool in which they fell.

In physical knowledge Aristotle and Theophras-
tus had already — no doubt assisted by the labours
of those of their predecessors whom they criticise
— made advances worthy of the maturity of science.

62 ON THE LITERATURE, ETC.,

The astonishing invention of geometry, that series
of discoveries which have enabled man to command
the elements and foresee future events, before the
subjects of his ignorant wonder, and which have
opened as it were the doors of the mysteries of
nature, had already been brought to great perfec-
tion. Metaphysics, the science of man's intimate
nature, and logic, or the grammar and elementary
principles of that science, received from the
latter philosophers of the Periclean age a firm
basis. All our more exact philosophy is built upon
the labours of these great men, and many of the
words which we employ in metaphysical distinc-
tions were invented by them to give accuracy and
system to their reasonings. The science of morals,
or the voluntary conduct of men in relation to
themselves or others, dates from this epoch. How
inexpressibly bolder and more pure were the doc-
trines of those great men, in comparison with the
timid maxims which prevail in the writings of the
most esteemed modern moralists ! They were such
as Phocion, and Epaminondas, and Timoleon, who
formed themselves on their influence, were to the
wretched heroes of our own age.

Their political and religious institutions are
more difficult to bring into comparison with those
of other times. A summary idea may be formed

OF THE ATHENIANS. 63

of the worth of any political and religious system,
by observing the comparative degree of happiness
and of intellect produced under its influence. And
whilst many institutions and opinions, which in
ancient Greece were obstacles to the improvement
of the human race, have been abolished among
modern nations, how many pernicious superstitions
and new contrivances of misrule, and unheard-of
complications of public mischief, have not been
invented among them by the ever-watchful spirit
of avarice and tyranny !

The modern nations of the civilised world owe
the progress which they have made — as well in those
physical sciences in which they have already
excelled their masters, as in the moral and intel-
lectual inquiries, in which, with all the advantage
of the experience of the latter, it can scarcely be
said that they have yet equalled them, — to what is
called the revival of learning ; that is, the study
of the writers of the age which preceded and
immediately followed the government of Pericles,
or of subsequent writers, who were, so to speak, the
rivers flowing from those immortal fountains. And
though there seems to be a principle in the modern
world, which, should circumstances analogous to
those which modelled the intellectual resources of
the age to which we refer, into so harmonious a

G4 ON THE LITERATURE, ETC.,

proportion, again arise, would arrest and perpetuate
them, and consign their results to a more equal,
extensive, and lasting improvement of the condition
of man — though justice and the true meaning of
human society are, if not more accurately, more
generally understood ; though perhaps men know
more, and therefore are more, as a mass, yet this
principle has never been called into action, and
requires indeed a universal and an almost appalling
change in the system of existing things. The
study of modern history is the study of kings,
financiers, statesmen, and priests. The history of
ancient Greece is the study of legislatois, philoso-
phers, and poets ; it is the history of men, compared
with the history of titles. What the Greeks were,
was a reality, not a promise. And what we are and
hope to be, is derived, as it were, from the influence
and inspiration of these glorious generations.

Whatever tends to afford a further illustration
of the manners and opinions of those to whom we
owe so much, and who were perhaps, on the whole,
the most perfect specimens of humanity of whom
we have authentic record, were infinitely valuable.
Let us see their errors, their weaknesses, their
daily actions, their famihar conversation, and catch
the tone of their society. When we discover how
far the most admirable community ever framed, was

OF THE ATHENIANS. 65

removed from that perfection to which human
society is impelled by some active power within
each bosom, to aspire, how great ought to be our
hopes, how resolute our struggles ! For the Greeks
of the Periclean age were widely different from us.
It is to be lamented that no modern writer has
hitherto dared to show them precisely as they
were. Barthelemi cannot be denied the praise of
industry and system ; but he never forgets that he
is a Christian and a Frenchman. Wieland, in his
delightful novels, makes indeed a very tolerable
Pagan, but cherishes too many political prejudices,
and refrains from diminishing the interest of his
romances by painting sentiments in which no
European of modern times can possibly sympa-
thise. There is no book which shows the Greeks
precisely as they were ; they seem all written for
children, with the caution that no practice or
sentiment, highly inconsistent with our present
manners, should be mentioned, lest those manners
should receive outrage and violation. But there
are many to whom the Greek language is inacces-
sible, who ought not to be excluded by this prudery
from possessing an exact and comprehensive con-
ception of the history of man ; for there is no
knowledge concerning what man has been and may
be, from partaking of which a person can depart,

66 ON THE LITERATURE, ETC.,

without becoming in some degree more philosophi-
cal, tolerant, and just.

One of the chief distinctions between the manners
of ancient Greece and modern Europe, consisted
in the regulations and the sentiments respecting
sexual intercourse. Whether this difference arises
from some imperfect influence of the doctrines of
Jesus Christ, who alleges the absolute and uncon-
ditional equality of all human beings, or from the
institutions of chivalry, or from a certain funda-
mental difl'erence of physical nature existing in the
Celts, or from a combination of all or any of these
causes, acting on each other, is a question worthy
of voluminous investigation. The fact is, that the
modern Europeans have in this circumstance, and
in the abolition of slavery, made an improvement
the most decisive in the regulation of human
society ; and all the virtue and the wisdom of the
Periclean age arose under other institutions, in
spite of the diminution which personal slavery and
the inferiority of women, recognised by law and
opinion, must have produced in the delicacy, the
strength, the comprehensiveness, and the accuracy
of their conceptions, in moral, political, and meta-
physical science, and perhaps in every other art
and science.

The women, thus degraded, became such as it

OF THE ATHENIANS. 67

was expected they would become. They possessed,
except with extraordinary exceptions, the habits
and the quaHties of slaves. They were probably not
extremely beautiful ; at least there was no such dis-
proportion in the attractions of the external form
between the female and male sex among the Greeks,
as exists among the modern Europeans. They were
certainly devoid of that moral and intellectual
loveliness with which the acquisition of knowledge
and the cultivation of sentiment animates, as with
another life of overpowering grace, the lineaments
and the gestures of every form which they inhabit.
Their eyes could not have been deep and intricate
from the workings of the mind, and could have
entangled no heart in soul- en woven labyrinths.

Let it not be imagined that because the Greeks
were deprived of its legitimate object, they were
incapable of sentimental love ; and that this passion
is the mere child of chivalry and the literature of
modern times. This object or its archetype for-
ever exists in the mind, which selects among those
who resemble it that which most resembles it ; and
instinctively fills up the interstices of the imperfect
image, in the same manner as the imagination
moulds and completes the shapes in clouds, or in
the fire, into the resemblances of whatever form,
animal, building, &c., happens to be present to it.

68 ON THE LITERATURE, ETC.,

Man is in his wildest state a social beinoj : a certain
degree of civilisation and refinement ever produces
the want of sympathies still more intimate and
complete ; and the gratification of the senses is no
longer all that is sought in sexual connexion. It
soon becomes a very small part of that profound
and complicated sentiment, which we call love,
which is rather the universal thirst for a communion
not only of the senses, but of our whole nature,
intellectual, imaginative and sensitive, and which,
when individualised, becomes an imperious neces-
sity, only to be satisfied by the complete or
partial, actual or supposed fulfilment of its claims.
This want grows more powerful in proportion to
the development which our nature receives from
civilisation, for man never ceases to be a social being.
The sexual impulse, which is only one, and often a
small part of those claims, serves, from its obvious
and external nature, as a kind of type or expression
of the rest, a common basis, an acknowledged
and visible link. Still it is a claim which even
derives a strength not its own from the accessory
circumstances which surround it, and one which
our nature thirsts to satisfy. To estimate this,
observe the degree of intensity and durability of
the love of the male towards the female in aiiimals
and savages ; and acknowledge all the duration and

OF THE ATHENIANS. 69

intensity observable in the love of civilised beings
beyond that of savages to be produced from other
causes. In the susceptibility of the external senses
there is probably no important difference.

Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one
half of the human race, received the highest culti-
vation and refinement ; whilst the other, so far as
intellect is concerned, were educated as slaves, and
were raised but few degrees in all that related to
moral or intellectual excellence above the condition
of savages. The gradations in the society of man
present us with slow improvement in this respect.
The Roman women held a higher consideration in
society, and were esteemed almost as the equal
partners with their husbands in the regulation of
domestic economy and the education of their chil-
dren. The practices and customs of modern Europe
are essentially different from and incomparably
less pernicious than either, however remote from
what an enlightened mind cannot fail to desire as
the future destiny of human beings.

ON THE SYMPOSIUM,

OR PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO.
^ .iFragnifttt.

The dialogue entitled " The Banquet," was
selected by the translator as the most beautiful
and perfect among all the works of Plato*. He
despairs of having communicated to the English
language any portion of the surpassing graces of
the composition, or having done more than present
an imperfect shadow of the language and the sen-
timent of this astonishing production.

Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek
philosophers, and from, or, rather, perhaps through
him, from his master Socrates, have proceeded
those emanations of moral and metaphysical know-
ledge, on which a long series and an incalculable

* The Republic, though replete with considerable errors of specula-
tion, is, indeed, the greatest repository of important truths of all the
■works of Plato. This, perhaps, is because it is the longest. He first,
and perhaps last, maintained that a state ought to be governed, not by
the wealthiest, or the most ambitious, or the most cunning, but by the
wisest ; the method of selecting such rulers, and the laws by which such
a selection is made, must correspond with and arise out of the moral
freedom and refinement of the people.

PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 71

variety of popular superstitions have sheltered
their absurdities from the slow contempt of man-
kind. Plato exhibits the rare union of close and
subtle logic, with the Pythian enthusiasm of poetry,
melted by the splendour and harmony of his periods
into one irresistible stream of musical impres-
sions, which hurry the persuasions onward, as in a
breathless career. His language is that of an
immortal spirit, rather than a man. Lord Bacon
is, perhaps, the only writer, who, in these parti-
culars, can be compared with him : his imitator,
Cicero, sinks in the comparison into an ape mocking
the gestures of a man. His views into the nature
of mind and existence are often obscure, only be-
cause they are profound ; and though his theories
respecting the government of the world, and the
elementary laws of moral action, are not always
correct, yet there is scarcely any of his treatises
which do not, however stained by puerile sophisms,
contain the most remarkable intuitions into all
that can be the subject of the human mind. His
excellence consists especially in intuition, and it is
this faculty which raises him far above Aristotle,
whose genius, though vivid and various, is obscure
in comparison with that of Plato.

The dialogue entitled the " Banquet," is called
EpccTLKos. or a Discussion upon Love, and is sup-

72 PREFACE TO THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

posed to have taken place at the house of Agathon,
at one of a series of festivals given by that poet,
on the occasion of his gaining the prize of
tragedy at the Dionysiaca. The account of the
debate on this occasion is supposed to have been
given by Apollodorus, a pupil of Socrates, many
years after it had taken place, to a companion who
was curious to hear it. This Apollodorus appears,
both from the style in which he is represented in
this piece, as well as from a passage in the Phsedon,
to have been a person of an impassioned and
enthusiastic disposition ; to borrow an image from
the Italian painters, he seems to have been the
St. John of the Socratic group. The drama (for so
the lively distinction of character and the various
and well- wrought circumstances of the story almost
entitle it to be called) begins by Socrates persuad-
ing Aristodemus to sup at Agathon's, uninvited.
The whole of this introduction affords the most
lively conception of refined Athenian manners.

[unfinished.]

•^•^^T, < THE BANQUET.

v^Hm^M

Cranslatelr from ^lato.
THE PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE.

APOLLODORUS, A FRIEND OF APOLLODORUS, GLAUCO, ARISTODEMUS,

SOCRATES, AGATHON, PH^DRUS, PAUSANIAS, ERYXIMACHUS,

ARISTOPHANES, DIOTIMA, ALCIBIADES.

APOLLODORUS.

I THINK that the subject of your inquiries is still
fresh in my memory ; for yesterday, as I chanced
to be returning home from Phaleros, one of my
acquaintance, seeing me before him, called out to
me from a distance, jokingly, " ApoUodorus, you
Phalerian, will you not wait a minute T — I waited
for him, and as soon as he overtook me, "I
have just been looking for you, ApoUodorus,'" he
said, "for I wished to hear what those discussions
were on Love, which took place at the party, when
Agathon, Socrates, Alcibiades, and some others,
met at supper. Some one who heard it from
Phoenix, the son of Philip, told me that you
could give a full account, but he could relate
nothing distmctly himself. Relate to me, then, I

VOL. I. E

74 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

entreat you, all the circumstances. I know you
are a faithful reporter of the discussions of your
friends ; but, first tell me, were you present at the
party or not ?"

" Your informant,"' I replied, " seems to have
given you no very clear idea of what you wish to
hear, if he thinks that these discussions took place
so lately as that I could have been of the party."' —
" Indeed, I thought so,"" replied he. — " For how,"'
said I, '' O Glauco ! could I have been present I
Do you not know that Agathon has been absent
from the city many years ? But, since I began to
converse with Socrates, and to observe each day
all his words and actions, three years are scarcely
past. Before this time I wandered about wherever
it might chance, thinking that I did something,
hut being, in truth, a most miserable wretch, not
less than you are now, who believe that you ought
to do anything rather than practise the love of
wisdom."" — " Do not cavil,"' interrupted Glauco,
" but tell me, when did this party take place T"

" Whilst we were yet children," I replied, "when
Agathon first gained the prize of tragedy, and the
day after that on which he and the chorus made
sacrifices in celebration of their success." — "A long
time ago, it seems. But who told you all the
circumstances of the discussion ? Did you hear

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 75

them from Socrates himself?" " No, by Jupiter !
But the same person from whom Phoenix had his
information, one Aristodemus, a Cydathenean,— a
little man who always went about without sandals.
He was present at this feast, being, I believe,
more than any of his contemporaries, a lover and
admirer of Socrates. I have questioned Socrates
concerning some of the circumstances of his nar-
ration, who confirms all that I have heard from
Aristodemus." — "Why, then,"' said Glauco, "why
not relate them, as we walk, to me ? The road to
the city is every way convenient, both for those
who listen and those who speak."

Thus as we walked I gave him some account of
those discussions concerning Love ; since, as I said
before, I remember them with sufficient accuracy.
If I am required to relate them also to you, that
shall willingly be done; for, whensoever either
I myself talk of philosophy, or listen to others
talking of it, in addition to the improvement which
I conceive there arises from such conversation, I
am delighted beyond measure ; but whenever I
hoar your discussions about monied men and great
proprietors, I am weighed down with grief, and
pity you, who, doing nothing, believe that you are
doing something. Perhaps you think that I am a
miserable wretch ; and, indeed, I believe that you
e2

76 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

think truly. I do not think, but well know, that
you are miserable.

COMPANION.

You are always the same, ApoUodorus — always
saying some ill of yourself and others. Indeed,
you seem to me to think every one miserable
except Socrates, beginning with yourself. I do
not know what could have entitled you to the
surname of the " Madman,'** for, I am sure, you
are consistent enough, for ever inveighing with
bitterness against yourself and all others, except
Socrates.

APOLLODORUS.

My dear friend, it is manifest that I am out of
my wits from this alone — that I have such opinion
as you describe concerning myself and you.

COMPANION.

It is not worth while, ApoUodorus, to dispute
now about these things; but do what I entreat
you, and relate to us what were these discussions.

APOLLODORUS.

They were such as I will proceed to tell you.
But let me attempt to relate them in the order
which Aristodemus observed in relating them to
me. He said that he met Socrates washed, and,
contrary to his usual custom, sandalled, and having
inquired whither he went so gaily dressed, Socrates

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 77

replied, "lam going to sup at Agathon's ; yesterday
I avoided it, disliking the crowd, which would attend
at the prize sacrifices then celebrated ; to-day I
promised to be there, and I made myself so gay,
because one ought to be beautiful to approach one
who is beautiful. But you, Aristodemus, what
think you of coming uninvited to supper?"" " I will
do," he replied, "as you command." " Follow, then,
that we may, by changing its application, disarm
that proverb, which says, To the feasts of the good^
the good come uninvited. Homer, indeed, seems
not only to destroy, but to outrage the proverb ;
for, describing Agamemnon as excellent in battle,
and Menelaus but a faint-hearted warrior, he
represents Menelaus as coming uninvited to the
feast of one better and braver than himself." —
Aristodemus hearing this, said, " I also am in some
danger, Socrates, not as you say, but according to
Homer, of approaching like an unworthy inferior,
the banquet of one more wise and excellent than
myself. Will you not, then, make some excuse
for me I for, I shall not confess that I came unin-
Aited, but shall say that I was invited by you." —
" As we walk together," said Socrates, *' we will
consider together what excuse to make — but let
us go."

Thus discoursing, they proceeded. But, as they

78 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

walked, Socrates, engaged in some deep contem-
plation, slackened his pace, and, observing Aris-
todemus waiting for him, he desired him to go on
before. When Aristodemus arrived at Agathon's
house he found the door open, and it occurred
somewhat comically, that a slave met him at the
vestibule, and conducted him where he found the
guests already reclined. As soon as Agathon saw
him, "You arrive just in time to sup with us,
Aristodemus," he said ; "if you have any other
purpose in your visit, defer it to a better opportunity.
I was looking for you yesterday, to invite you to be
of our party ; I could not find you anywhere. But
how is it that you do not bring Socrates with youT'
But he turning round, and not seeing Socrates
behind him, said to Agathon, " I just came hither
in his company, being invited by him to sup with
you."" — "You did well," replied Agathon, "tocome;
but where is Socrates T — " He just now came hither
behind me ; I myself wonder where he can be." —
"Go and look, boy," said Agathon, "and bring
Socrates in ; meanwhile, you, Aristodemus, recline
there near Eryximachus." And he bade a slave
wash his feet that he might recline. Another
slave, meanwhile, brought word that Socrates had
retired into a neighbouring vestibule, where he
stood, and, in spite of his message, refused to

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 79

come in. — "What absurdity you talk," cried Aga-
thon, "call him, and do not leave him till he comes."
— "Leave him alone, by all means," said Aristo-
demus, "it is customary with him sometimes to
retire in this way and stand wherever it may
chance. He will come presently, I do not doubt ;
do not disturb him." — " Well, be it as you will,"
said Agathon; " as it is, you boys, bring supper for
the rest ; put before us what you will, for I resolved
that there should be no master of the feast. Con-
sider me, and these, my friends, as guests, whom
you have invited to supper, and serve them so that
we may commend you."

After this they began supper, but Socrates did
not come in. Agathon ordered him to be called,
but Aristodemus perpetually forbade it. At last
he came in, much about the middle of supper, not
having delayed so long as was his custom. Agathon
(who happened to be reclining at the end of the
table, and alone,) said, as he entered, " Come
hither, Socrates, and sit down by me ; so that by
the mere touch of one so wise as you are, I may
enjoy the fruit of your meditations in the vestibule;
for, I well know, you would not have departed till
you had discovered and secured it."

Socrates having sate down as he was desired,
replied, " It would be well, Agathon, if wisdom

80 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

were of such a nature, as that when we touched
each other, it would overflow of its own accord,
from him who poss3Sses much to him who possesses
little ; like the water in two chalices, which will
flow through a flock of wool from the fuller into
the emptier, until both are equal. If wisdom had
this property, I should esteem myself most fortu-
nate in reclining near to you. I should thus soon
be filled, I think, with the most beautiful and
various wisdom. Mine, indeed, is something obscure,
and doubtful, and dreamlike. But yours is radiant,
and has been crowned with amplest reward ; for,
though you are yet so young, it shone forth from
you, and became so manifest yesterday, that more
than thirty thousand Greeks can bear testimony to
its excellence and loveliness." — " You are laughing
at me, Socrates,*" said Agathon, " but you and I
will decide this controversy about wisdom by and
bye, taking Bacchus for our judge. At present turn
to your supper."

After Socrates and the rest had finished supper,
and had reclined back on their couches, and the
libations had been poured forth, and they had sung
hymns to the god, and all other rites which are
customary had been performed, they turned to
drinking. Then Pausanias made this kind of
proposal. " Come, my friends,"" said he, " in what

A

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 81

manner will it be pleasantest for us to drink ? I
must confess to you that, in reality, I am not very
well from the wine we drank last night, and I have
need of some intermission. I suspect that most of
you are in the same condition, for you were here
yesterday. Now, consider how we shall drink
most easily and comfortably.""

"'Tis a good proposal, Pausanias," said Aris-
tophanes, ""to contrive, in some way or other,
to place moderation in our cups. I was one of
those who were drenched last night." — Eryxima-
chus, the son of Acumenius, hearing this, said :
" I am of your opinion ; I only wish to know one
thing^whether Agathon is in the humour for
hard drinking I" — " Not at all," replied Agathon ;
" I confess that I am not able to drink much this
evening." — " It is an excellent thing for us," replied
Eryximachus, " I mean myself, Aristodemus, Phse-
drus, and these others, if you who are such invincible
drinkers, now refuse to drink. I ought to except
Socrates, for he is capable of drinking everything,
or nothing ; and whatever we shall determine will
equally suit him. Since, then, no one present has
any desire to drink much wine, I shall perhaps give
less offence, if I declare the nature of drunkenness.
The science of medicine teaches us that drunkenness
is very pernicious : nor would I 'choose to drink im-
E 3 /

82 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

moderately myself, or counsel another to do so,
especially if he had been drunk the night before." —
" Yes," said Phsedrus, the Myrinusian, interrupting
him, "I have been accustomed to confide in you, espe-
cially in your directions concerning medicine; and I
would now willingly do so, if the rest will do the
same." All then agreed that they would drink at
this present banquet not for drunkenness, but for
pleasure.

" Since, then," said Eryximachus, " it is decided
that no one shall be compelled to drink more than
he pleases, I think that we may as well send away
the flute-player to play to herself ; or, if she likes,
to the women within. Let us devote the present
occasion to conversation between ourselves, and if
you wish, I will propose to you what shall be the
subject of our discussion." All present desired and
entreated that he would explain. — " The exordium
of my speech," said Eryximachus, " will be in the
style of the Menalippe of Euripides, for the story
which I am about to tell belongs not to me, but to
Phsedrus. Phsedrus has often indignantly com-
plained to me, saying — ' Is it not strange, Eryxi-
machus, that there are innumerable hymns and
pseans composed for the other gods, but that
not one of the many poets who spring up in the
world liave ever composed a verse in honour of

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 83

Love, who is such and so great a god ? Nor any
one of those accomplished sophists, who, Hke the
famous Prodicus, have celebrated the praise of
Hercules and others, have ever celebrated that of
Love ; but what is more astonishing, I have lately
met with the book of some philosopher, in which
salt is extolled on account of its utility, and many
other things of the same nature are in like manner
celebrated with elaborate praise. That so much
serious thought is expended on such trifles, and
that no man has dared to this day to frame a
hymn in honour of Love, who being so great a
deity, is thus neglected, may well be sufficient to
excite my indignation.'

" There seemed to me some justice in these com-
plaints of Phsedrus ; I propose, therefore, at the
same time for the sake of giving pleasure to Phae-
drus, and that we may on the present occasion
do something well and befitting us, that this God
should receive from those who are now present the
honour which is most due to him. If you agree
to my proposal, an excellent discussion might arise
on the subject. Every one ought, according to
my plan, to praise Love with as much eloquence
as he can. Let Phsedrus begin first, both because
he reclines the first in order, and because he is the
father of the discussion."

84 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

" No one will vote against you, Eryximachus,"
said Socrates, '*for how can I oppose your pro-
posal, who am ready to confess that I know nothing
on any subject but love ? Or how can Agathon, or
Pausanias, or even Aristophanes, whose life is one
perpetual ministration to Venus and Bacchus?
Or how can any other whom I see here ? Though
we who sit last are scarcely on an equality with
you ; for if those who speak before us shall have
exhausted the subject with their eloquence and
reasonings, our discourses will be superfluous. But
in the name of Good Fortune, let Phaedrus begin
and praise Love." The whole party agreed to
what Socrates said, and entreated Phsedrus to
begin.

What each then said on this subject, Aristo-
demus did not entirely recollect, nor do I recollect
all that he related to me ; but only the speeches
of those who said what was most worthy of remem-
brance. First, then, Phsedrus began thus : —

" Love is a mighty deity, and the object of
admiration, both to Gods and men, for many and
for various claims ; but especially on account of
his origin. For that he is to be honoured as one
of the most ancient of the gods, this may serve as
a testimony, that Love has no parents, nor is there
any poet or other person who has ever affirmed that

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 85

there are such. Hesiod says, that first ' Chaos was
produced ; then the broad-bosomed Earth, to be a
secure foundation for all things; then Love.* He
says, that after Chaos these two were produced,
the Earth and Love. Parmenides, speaking of
generation, says : — ' But he created Love before
any of the gods.' Acusileus agrees with Hesiod.
Love, therefore, is universally acknowledged to be
among the oldest of things. And in addition to
this, Love is the authoi* of our greatest advau'
tages; for I cannot imagine a greater happiness
and advantage to one who is in the flower of youth
than an amiable lover, or to a lover, than an ami-
able object of his love. For neither birth, nor
wealth, nor honours, can awaken in the minds
of men the principles which should guide those
who from their youth aspire to an honourable
and excellent life, as Love awakens them. I
speak of the fear of shame, which deters them from
that which is disgraceful ; and the love of glory,
which incites to honourable deeds. For it is not
possible that a state or private person should
accomplish, without these incitements, anything
beautiful or great. I assert, then, that should one
who loves be discovered in any dishonourable
action, or tamely enduring insult through cow-
ardice, he would feel more anguish and shame if

86 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

observed by the object of his passion, than if he
were observed by his father, or his companions, or
any other person. In hke manner among warmly
attached friends, a man is especially grieved to
be discovered by his friend in any dishonourable
act. If then, by any contrivance, a state or army
could be composed of friends bound by strong
attachment, it is beyond calculation how excel-
lently they would administer their affairs, refrain-
ing from any thing base, contending with each
other for the acquirement of fame, and exhibiting
such valour in battle as that, though few in num-
bers, they might subdue all mankind. For should
one friend desert the ranks or cast away his arms
in the presence of the other, he would suffer far
acuter shame from that one person's regard, than
from the regard of all other men. A thousand
times would he prefer to die, rather than desert
the object of his attachment, and not succour him
in danger.

" There is none so worthless whom Love cannot
impel, as it were by a divine inspiration, towards
virtue, even so that he may through this inspir-
ation become equal to one who might naturally
be more excellent ; and, in truth, as Homer says :
The God breathes vigour into certain heroes — so
Love breathes into those who love, the spirit which

THE BANQUET OF PLATO, 87

is produced from himself. Not only men, but
even women who love, are those alone who wil-
lingly expose themselves to die for others. Alces-
tis, the daughter of Pelias, affords to the Greeks
a remarkable example of this opinion ; she alone
being willing to die for her husband, and so sur-
passing his parents in the affection with which
love inspired her towards him, as to make them
appear, in the comparison with her, strangers to
their own child, and related to him merely in
name ; and so lovely and admirable did this action
appear, not only to men, but even to the Gods,
that, although they conceded the prerogative of
bringing back the spirit from death to few among
the many who then performed excellent and
honourable deeds, yet, delighted with this action,
they redeemed her soul from the infernal regions :
so highly do the Gods honour zeal and devotion in
love. They sent back indeed Orpheus, the son
of (Eagrus, from Hell, with his purpose unfulfilled,
and, showing him only the spectre of her for
whom he came, refused to render up herself. For
Orpheus seemed to them, not as Alcestis, to have
dared die for the sake of her whom he loved, and
thus to secure to himself a perpetual intercourse
with her in the regions to which she had preceded
him, but like a cowardly musician, to have con-

88 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

trived to descend alive into Hell ; and, indeed,
they appointed as a punishment for his cowardice,
that he should be put to death by women.

" Far otherwise did they reward Achilles, the
son of Thetis, whom they sent to inhabit the
islands of the blessed. For Achilles, though
informed by his mother that his own death would
ensue upon his killing Hector, but that if he
refrained from it he might return home and die
in old age, yet preferred revenging and honouring
his beloved Patroclus ; not to die for him merely,
but to disdain and reject that life which he had
ceased to share. Therefore the Greeks honoured
Achilles beyond all other men, because he thus

preferred his friend fco all things else.

*****

On this account have the Gods rewarded Achilles
more amply than Alcestis ; permitting his spirit
to inhabit the islands of the blessed. Hence do
1 assert that Love is the most ancient and venera-
ble of deities, and most powerful to endow mortals
with the possession of happiness and virtue, both
whilst they live and after they die."

ThusAristodemus reported the discourse of Phae-
drus ; and after Phsedrus, he said that some others
spoke, whose discourses he did not well remember.
When they had ceased, Pausanias began thus : —

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 89

" Simply to praise Love, O Phsedrus, seems to
me too bounded a scope for our discourse. If
Love were one, it would be well. But since Love is
not one, I will endeavour to distinguish which is
the Love whom it becomes us to praise, and having
thus discriminated one from the other, will attempt
to render him who is the subject of our discourse
the honour due to his divinity. We all know
that Venus is never without Love ; and if Venus
were one, Love would be one ; but since there are
two Venuses, of necessity also must there be two
Loves. For assuredly are there two Venuses ;
one, the eldest, the daughter of Uranus, born
without a mother, whom we call the Uranian;
the other younger, the daughter of Jupiter and
Dione, whom we call the Pandemian ; —of neces-
sity must there also be two Loves, the Uranian
and Pandemian companions of these goddesses.
It is becoming to praise all the Gods, but the
attributes which fall to the lot of each may be
distinguished and selected. For any particular
action whatever, in itself is neither good nor evil ;
what we are now doing — drinking, singing, talking,
none of these things are good in themselves, but
the mode in which they are done stamps them
with its own nature ; and that which is done well,
is good, and that which is done ill, is evil. Thus,

^l.

90 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

not all love, nor every mode of love is beautiful,

or worthy of commendation, but that alone which

excites us to love worthily. The Love, therefore,

which attends upon Venus Pandemos is, in truth,

common to the vulgar, and presides over transient

and fortuitous connexions, and is worshipped by

the least excellent of mankind. The votaries of

this deity seek the body rather than the soul,

^ ^^{^rrt 3-nd the ignorant rather than the wise, dis-

/»^^^^ /^ daining all that is honourable and lovely, and

considering how they shall best satisfy their

sensual necessities. This Love is derived from

the younger goddess, who partakes in her nature

both of male and female. But the attendant on

the other, the Uranian, whose nature is entirely

masculine, is the Love who inspires us with

h fK^vtj affection, and exempts us from all wantonness

and libertinism. Those who are inspired by

this divinity seek the affections of those who

'■'^h^l h are 'endowed by nature with greater excellence

and vigour both of body and mind. And it is

easy to distinguish those who especially exist

under the influence of this power, by their choosing

in early youth as the objects of their love those

in whom the intellectual faculties have begun to

4iu ii develop. For those who begin to love in this man-

fhMi, . ner, seem to me to be preparing to pass their whole

THE BANQUET OP PLATO. 91

life together in a community of good and evil,
and not ever lightly deceiving those who love
them, to be faithless to their vows. There ought
to be a law that none should love the very young ; t>w^ ^^^
so much serious affection as this deity enkindles
should not be doubtfully bestowed ; for the body and
mind of those so young are yet unformed, and it is
difficult to foretell what will be their future ten-
dencies and power. The good voluntarily impose
this law upon themselves, and those vulgar lovers
ought to be compelled to the same observance, as
we deter them with all the power of the laws from
the love of free matrons. For these are Jbhe per-
sons whose shameful actions embolden those who
observe their importunity and intemperance to
assert, that it is dishonourable to serve and gratify
the objects of our love. But no one who does
this gracefully and according to law, can justly be
liable to the imputation of blame. -s^

* # * * *

" Not only friendship, but philosophy and the
practice of the gymnastic exercises, are represented
as dishonourable by the tyrannical governments
under which the barbarians live. For I imagine
it would little conduce to the benefit of the gover-
nors, that the governed should be disciplined to
lofty thoughts and to the unity and communion of

92 THE BANQUET OP PLATO.

stedfast friendship, of which admirable effects the
tyrants of our own country have also learned that
Love is the author. For the love of Harmodius
and Aristogiton, strengthened into a firm friendship,
dissolved the tyranny. Wherever, therefore, it is
declared dishonourable in any case to serve and
l/mAc benefit friends, that law is a mark of the depravity
of the legislator, the avarice and tyranny of the
rulers, and the cowardice of those who are ruled.
Wherever it is simply declared to be honourable
without distinction of cases, such a declaration
denotes dulness and want of subtlety of mind in
the authors of the regulation. Here the degrees
of praise or blame to be attributed by law 'are far
better regulated ; but it is yet difficult to determine
the cases to which they should refer.

" It is evident, however, for one in whom passion
is enkindled, it is more honourable to love openly
than secretly ; and most honourable to love the
most excellent and virtuous, even if they should be
less beautiful than others. It is honourable for
the lover to exhort and sustain the object of his
love in virtuous conduct. It is considered honour-
able to attain the love of those whom we seek, and
the contrary shameful ; and to facilitate this attain-
ment, opinion has given to the lover the permission
of acquiring favour by the most extraordinary

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 93

devices, which if a person should practise for any
purpose besides this, he would incur the severest
reproof of philosophy. For if any one desirous of
accumulating money, or ambitious of procuring
power, or seeking any other advantage, should,
like a lover, seeking to acquire the favour of his
beloved, employ prayers and entreaties in his
necessity, and swear such oaths as lovers swear,
and sleep before the threshold, and offer to
subject himself to such slavery as no slave even
would endure ; he would be frustrated of the
attainment of what he sought, both by his enemies
and friends, these reviling him for his flattery,
those sharply admonishing him, and taking to
themselves the shame of his servility. But there
is a certain grace in a lover who does all these
things, so that he alone may do them without
dishonour. It is commonly said that the Gods
accord pardon to the lover alone if he should break
his oath, and that there is no oath by Venus.
Thus, as our law declares, both gods and men have
given to lovers all possible indulgence.

«' The affair, however, I imagine, stands thus :
As I have before said, love cannot be considered
in itself as either honourable or dishonourable :

X

94 THE BANQUET OP PLATO.

if it is honourably pursued, it is honourable ; if
dishonourably, dishonourable : it is dishonourable
basely to serve and gratify a worthless person ; it
is honourable honourably to serve a person of
virtue. That Pandemic lover who loves rather
the body than the soul is worthless, nor can be
constant and consistent, since he has placed his
affections on that which has no stability. For as
soon as the flower of the form, which was the sole
object of his desire, has faded, then he departs and
is seen no more ; bound by no faith nor shame of
his many promises and persuasions. But he who
is the lover of virtuous manners is constant
during life, since he has placed himself in har-
mony and desire with that which is consistent with
itself.

" These two classes of persons' [we ought to
distinguish with careful examination, so that we
may serve and converse with the one and avoid the
other; determining, by that inquiry, by what a man
is attracted, and for what the object of his love is
dear to him. On the same account it is considered
as dishonourable to be inspired with love at once,
lest time should be wanting to know and approve
the character of the object. It is considered
dishonourable to be captivated by the allurements
of wealth and power, or terrified through injuries

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 95

to yield up the affections, or not to despise in the
comparison with an unconstrained choice allpoHtical
influence and personal advantage. For no circum-
stance is there in wealth or power so invariable and
consistent, as that no generous friendship can ever
A spring up from amongst them/ We have aa-epinion: ^ ^'^-^ k
with respect to lovers which declares that it shall
not be considered servile or disgraceful, though the
lover should submit himself to anyspecies of slavery
for the sake of his beloved. The same opinion
holds with respect to those who undergo any
degradation for the sake of virtue. [ And also it /,
is esteemed among us, that if any one chooses to
serve and obey another for the purpose of becoming
more wise or more virtuous through the intercourse
that might thence arise, such willing slavery is not
the slavery of a dishonest flatterer. Through thi
we should consider in the same light a servitude
undertaken for the sake of love as one undertaken
for the acquirement of wisdom or any other excel-
lence, if indeed the devotion of a lover to his
beloved is to be considered a beautiful thing.
For when the lover and the beloved have once .

arrived at the same point, the province of each,.-f -g^ ^^ i
being distinguished; * * * the one able to assist a.*><».^|'«'*-^
in the cultivation of the mind and in the acquirement *** -^i^
of every other excellence ; the other yet requiring ; ^^

96 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

education, and seeking the possession of wisdom ;
then alone, by the union of these conditions, and in
no other case, is it honourable for the beloved to
AM yield up the affections to the lover. In this ser-
vitude alone there is no disgrace in being deceived
and defeated of the object for which it was under-
taken, whereas every other is disgraceful, whether
we are deceived or no.

/^. * * # * *

On the same principle, if any one seeks the friend-
ship of another, believing him to be virtuous, for
the sake of becoming better through such inter-
course and affection, and is deceived, his friend
turning out to be worthless, and far from the
possession of virtue ; yet it is honourable to have
been so deceived. For such a one seems to have
submitted to a kind of servitude, because he
would endure any thing for the sake of becoming
more virtuous and wise ; a disposition of mind
eminently beautiful.

" This is that Love who attends on the Uranian
deity, and is Uranian ; the author of innumerable
benefits both to the state and to individuals, and
by the necessity of whose influence those who love
are disciplined into the zeal of virtue. All other loves
are the attendants on Venus Pandemos. So much,

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 97

although unpremeditated, is what I have to deliver
on the subject of love, O Phsedrus."

Pausanias having ceased (for so the learned teach
me to denote the changes of the discourse), Aristo-
demus said that it came to the turn of Aristophanes
to speak ; but it happened that, from repletion
or some other cause, he had an hiccough which
prevented him ; so he turned to Eryximachus, the
physician, who was reclining close beside him, and
said — " Eryximachus, it is but fair that you should
cure my hiccough, or speak instead of me until it is
over/'— " I will do both," said Eryximachus ; " I
will speak in your turn, and you, when your hiccough
has ceased, shall speak in mine. Meanwhile, if you
hold your breath some time, it will subside, If
not, gargle your throat with water ; and if it
still continue, take something to stimulate your
nostrils, and sneeze ; do this once or twice, and
even though it should be very violent it will cease."
— " Whilst you speak,"*' said Aristophanes, " T
will follow your directions/' — Eryximachus then
began : —

" Since Pausanias, beginning his discourse excel-
lently, placed no fit completion and development
to it, I think it necessary to attempt to fill up
what he has left unfinished. He has reasoned well
in defining love as of a double nature. The science

VOL. 1. F

yo THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

of medicine, to which I have addicted myself, seems
to teach me that the love which impels towards
those who are beautiful, does not subsist only in
the souls of men, but in the bodies also of those of
all other living beings which are produced upon
earth, and, in a word, in all things which are. So
wonderful and mighty is this divinity, and so widely
is his influence extended over all divine and human
things ! For the honour of my profession, I will
begin by adducing a proof from medicine. The
nature of the body contains within itself this double
love. For that which is healthy and that which
is diseased in a body differ and are unlike : that
which is unlike, loves and desires that which is
unlike. Love, therefore, is different in a sane and
in a diseased body. Pausanias has asserted rightly
that it is honourable to gratify those things in the
body which are good and healthy, and in this
consists the skill of the physician ; whilst those
which are bad and diseased, ought to be treated
with no indulgence. The science of medicine, in a
word, is a knowledge of the love affairs of the body,
as they bear relation to repletion and evacua-
tion ; and he is the most skilful physician who can
trace those operations of the good and evil love, can
make the one change places with the other, and
attract love into those parts from which he is absent.

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 99

or expel him from those which he ought not to
occupy. He ought to make those things which are
most inimical, friendly, and excite them to mutual
love. But those things are most inimical, which are
most opposite to each other ; cold to heat, bitter-
ness to sweetness, dryness to moisture. Our pro-
genitor, ^Esculapius, as the poets inform us, (and
indeed I believe them,) through the skill which he
possessed to inspire love and concord in these
contending principles, established the science of
medicine.

" The gymnastic arts and agriculture, no less
than medicine, are exercised under the dominion of
this God. Music, as any one may perceive, who
yields a very slight attention to the subject, ori-
ginates from the same source ; which Heraclitus
probably meant, though he could not express his
meaning very clearly in words, when he says, ' One
though apparently differing, yet so agrees with itself,
as the harmony of a lyre and a bow."* It is great
absurdity to say that a harmony differs, and can
exist|-between things whilst they are dissimilar ;
but probably he meant that from sounds which
first differed, like the grave and the acute, and
which afterwards agreed, harmony was produced
according to musical art. For no harmony can
arise from the grave and the acute whilst yet they
F 2

100

THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

differ. But harmony is symphony : symphony is,
as it were, concord. But it is impossible that
concord should subsist between things that differ,
so long as they differ. Between things which are
discordant and dissimilar there is then no harmony.
A rhythm is produced from that which is quick, and
that which is slow, first being distinguished and
opposed to each other, and then made accordant ;
so does medicine, no less than music, establish a
concord between the objects of its art, producing
love and agreement between adverse things.

" Music is then the knowledge of that which
relates to love in harmony and system. In the
very system of harmony and rhythm, it is easy to
distinguish love. The double love is not distin-
guishable in music itself ; but it is required to
apply it to the service of mankind by system and
harmony, which is called poetry, or the composition
of melody ; or by the correct use of songs and
measures already composed, which is called disci-
pline ; then one can be distinguished from the other,
by the aid of an extremely skilful artist. And the
better love ought to be honoured and preserved for
the sake of those who are virtuous, and that the
nature of the vicious may be changed through the
inspiration of its spirit. This is that beautiful
Uranian love, the attendant on the Uranian muse :

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 101

the Pandemian is the attendant of Polyhymnia ;
to whose influence we should only so far subject
ourselves, as to derive pleasure from it without
indulging to excess ; in the same manner as,
according to our art, we are instructed to seek
the pleasures of the table, only so far as we can
enjoy them without the consequences of disease.
In music, therefore, and in medicine, and in all
other things, human and divine, this double love
ought to be traced and discriminated ; for it is in
all things.

" Even the constitution of the seasons of the
year is penetrated with these contending principles.
For so often as heat and cold, dryness and moisture,
of which I spoke before, are influenced by the more
benignant love, and are harmoniously and tempe-
rately intermingled with the seasons, they bring ma-
turity and health to men, and to all the other animals
and plants. But when the evil and injurious love
assumes the dominion of the seasons of the year,
destruction is spread widely abroad. Then pesti-
lence is accustomed to arise, and many other blights
and diseases fall upon animals and plants : and
hoar frosts, and hails, and mildew on the corn, are
produced from that excessive and disorderly love,
with which each season of the year is impelled
towards the other ; the motions of which and the

102 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

knowledge of the stars, is called astronomy. All
sacrifices, and all those things in which divination
is concerned, (for these things are the links by
which is maintained an intercourse and communion
between the Gods and men,) are nothing else than
the science of preservation and right government
of Love. For impiety is accustomed to spring up,
so soon as any one ceases to serve the more honour-
able Love, and worship him by the sacrifice of ffood
actions; but submits himself to the influences of
the other, in relation to his duties towards his
parents, and the Gods, and the living, and the
dead. It is the object of divination to distinguish
and remedy the effects of these opposite loves ; and
divination is therefore the author of the friendship
of Gods and men, because it affords the knowledge
of what in matters of love is lawful or unlawful
to men.

" Thus every species of love possesses collectively
a various and vast, or rather universal power. But
love which incites to the acquirement of its objects
according to virtue and wisdom, possesses the most
exclusive dominion, and prepares for his worship-
pers the highest happiness through the mutual
intercourse of social kindness which it promotes
among them, and through the benevolence which
he attracts to them from the Gods, our superiors.

THE BANQUET OP PLATO. 103

" Probably in thus praising Love, I have unwil-
lingly omitted many things ; but it is your business,

0 Aristophanes, to fill up all that I have left
incomplete ; or, if you have imagined any other
mode of honouring the divinity ; for I observe
your hiccough is over."

" Yes," said Aristophanes, " but not before I
applied the sneezing. I wonder why the harmonious
construction of our body should require such noisy
operations as sneezing ; for it ceased the moment

1 sneezed." — " Do you not observe what you do,
my good Aristophanes T' said Eryximachus ; " you
are going to speak, and you predispose us to
laughter, and compel me to watch for the first
ridiculous idea which you may start in your dis-
course, when you might have spoken in peace." —
" Let me unsay what I have said, then," replied
Aristophanes, laughing. " Do not watch me, I
entreat you ; though I am not afraid of saying
what is laughable, (since that would be all gain,
and quite in the accustomed spirit of my muse,)
but lest I should say what is ridiculous." — *'Do you
think to throw your dart, and escape with impunity,
Aristophanes ? Attend, and what you say be care-
ful you maintain ; then, perhaps, if it pleases me,
I may dismiss you without question."

" Indeed, Eryximachus," proceeded Aristo-

J 04 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

phanes, " I have designed that my discourse should
be very different from yours and that of Pausanias.
It seems to me that mankind are by no means
penetrated with a conception of the power of Love,
or they would have built sumptuous temples and
altars, and have established magnificent rites of
sacrifice in his honour ; he deserves worship and
homage more than all the other Gods, and he
has yet received none. For Love is of all the Gods
the most friendly to mortals ; and the physician
of those wounds, whose cure would be the greatest
happiness which could be conferred upon the human
race. I will endeavour to unfold to you his true
power, and you can relate what I declare to
others.

" You ought first to know the nature of man,
and the adventures he has gone through ; for his
nature was anciently far different from that which
it is at present. First, then, human beings were
formerly not divided into two sexes, male and
female ; there was also a third, common to both the
others, the name of which remains, though the sex
itself has disappeared. The androgynous sex, both
in appearance and in name, was common both to
male and female ; its name alone remains, which
labours under a reproach.

" At the period to which I refer, the form of

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 105

every human being was round, the back and the
sides being circularly joined, and each had four
arms and as many legs ; two faces fixed upon a
round neck, exactly like each other ; one head
between the two faces ; four ears, 'and every thing
else as from such proportions it is easy to conjec-
ture. Man walked upright as now, in whatever
direction he pleased ; but when he wished to go
fast he made use of all his eight limbs, and pro-
ceeded in a rapid motion by rolling circularly
round, — like tumblers, who, with their legs in the
air, tumble round and round. We account for the
production of three sexes by supposing that, at the
beginning, the male was produced from the sun, the
female from the earth ; and that sex which parti-
cipated in both sexes, from the moon, by reason oi
the androgynous nature of the moon. They were
round, and their mode of proceeding was round,
from the similarity which must needs subsist between
them and their parent.

" They were strong also, and had aspiring
thoughts. They it was who levied war against the
Gods ; and what Homer writes concerning Ephi-
altus and Otus, that they sought to ascend heaven
and dethrone the Gods, in reality relates to this
primitive people. Jupiter and the other Gods
debated what was to be done in this emergency.
F 3

106 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

For neither could they prevail on themselves to
destroy them, as they had the giants, with thunder,
so that the race should be abolished ; for in that
case they would be deprived of the honours of the
sacrifices which they were in the custom of receiving
from them ; nor could they permit a continuance
of their insolence and impiety. Jupiter, with some
difficulty having desired silence, at length spoke.
' I think,' said he, ' I have contrived a method by
which we may, by rendering the human race more
feeble, quell the insolence which they exercise,
without proceeding to their utter destruction. I
will cut each of them in half ; and so they will at
once be weaker and more useful on account of their
numbers. They shall walk upright on two legs.
If they show any more insolence, and will not keep
quiet, I will cut them up in half again, so they
shall go about hopping on one leg."

" So saying, he cut human beings in half, as
people cut eggs before they salt them, or as I have
seen eggs cut with hairs. He ordered Apollo to
take each one as he cut him, and turn his face and
half his neck towards the operation, so that by
contemplating it he might become more cautious
and humble ; and then, to cure him, Apollo turned
the face round, and drawing the skin upon what
we now call the belly, like a contracted pouch, and

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 107

leaving one opening, that which is called the navel,
tied it in the middle. He then smoothed many
other wrinkles, and moulded the breast with much
such an instrument as the leather-cutters use to
smooth the skins upon the block. He left only a
few wrinkles in the belly, near the navel, to serve as
a record of its former adventure. Immediately
after this division, as each desired to possess the
other half of himself, these divided people threw
their arms around and embraced each other, seeking
to grow together ; and from this resolution to do
nothing without the other half, they died of hunger
and weakness : when one half died and the other
was left alive, that which was thus left sought the
other and folded it to its bosom; whether that
half were an entire woman (for we now call it a
woman) or a man ; and thus they perished. But
Jupiter, pitying them, thought of another contri-
vance. * * * In this manner is generation
now produced, by the union of male and female ;
so that from the embrace of a man and woman the
race is propagated, • - ; - ' '•-#f -^^-^ *•■

" From this period, mutual Jove has naturally '

existed between human beings ; that reconciler
and bond of union of their original nature, which
seeks to make two, one, and to heal the divided
nature of man. Every one of us is thus the half

■y-t i9t4Mt0'

108 THE BANQUET OP PLATO.

Z*" '^'' of what may be properly termed a man, and like a
^.CJt pselta cut in two, is the imperfect portion of an

entire whole, perpetually necessitated to seek the

half belonging to him.
, I *****

, L " Such as I have described is ever an affectionate

lover and a faithful friend, delighting in that which
is in conformity with his own nature. Whenever,
therefore, any such as I have described are impetu-
ously struck, through the sentiment of their former
union, with love and desire and the want of com-
munity, they are unwilling to be divided even for
a moment. These are they who devote their whole
lives to each other, with a vain and inexpressible
longing to obtain from each other something they
know not what ; for it is not merely the sensual
delights of their intercourse for the sake of which
they dedicate themselves to each other with such
serious affection ; but the soul of each manifestly
thirsts for, from the other, something which there
are no words to describe, and divines that which
r^ it seeks, and traces obscurely the footsteps of its
^^^J^ ^ obscure desire. If Vulcan should say to persons
' jfin-i thus affected, ;' My good people, what is it that you
4 ^»wj want with one another f And if, while they were
ct^^^^, hesitating what to answer, he should proceed to
'^ ; ask, ' Do you not desire the closest union and

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 109

singleness to exist between you, so that you may
never be divided night or day ? If so, I will melt
you together, and make you grow into one, so that
both in life and death ye may be undivided. Con-
sider, is this what you desire ? Will it content
you if you become that which I propose V We
all know that no one would refuse such an offer,
but would at once feel that this was what he had
ever sought ; and intimately to mix and melt and
to be melted together with his beloved, so that one
should be made out of two.

" The cause of this desire is, that according to
our original nature, we were once entire. The
desire and the pursuit of integrity and union is that
which we all love. First, as I said, we were entire,
but now we have been dwindled through our own
weakness, as the Arcadians by the Lacedemonians.
There is reason to fear, if we are guilty of any
additional impiety towards the Gods, that we may
be cut in two again, and may go about like those
figures painted on the columns, divided through
the middle of our nostrils, as thin as lispse. On
which account every man ought to be exhorted
to pay due reverence to the Gods, that we may
escape so severe a punishment, and obtain those
things which Love, our general and commander,
incites us to desire ; against whom let none rebel

110 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

by exciting the hatred of the Gods. For if we
Jf'J^ continue on good terms with them, we may discover
ijl^ and possess those lost and concealed objects of our
^»» ** love ; a good-fortune which now befalls to few.
iM^e/^ *****

*^*^ t^^ " ^ assert, then, that the happiness of all, both
^T-j. *^ men and women, consists singly in the fulfilment
D«^ ^ of their love, and in that possession of its objects
•^ . by which we are in some degree restored to our
Jk ^fl^ ancient nature. If this be the completion of feli-
€ftt^^ city, that must necessarily approach nearest to it,
in which we obtain the possession and society of
those whose natures most intimately accord with
our own. And if we would celebrate any God as
the author of this benefit, we should justly cele-
brate Love with hymns of joy ; who, in our present
condition, brings good assistance in our necessity,
and affords great hopes, if we persevere in piety
towards the Gods, that he will restore us to our
original state, and confer on us the complete hap-
piness alone suited to our nature.

"Such, Eryximachus, is my discourse on the
subject of Love ; different indeed from yours, which
I nevertheless entreat you not to turn into ridicule,
that we may not interrupt what each has separately
to deliver on the subject.^"*

" I will refrain at present," said Eryximachus,

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. Ill

"for your discourse delighted me. And if I did
not know that Socrates and Agathon were pro-
foundly versed in the science of love affairs, I should
fear that they had nothing new to say, after so
many and such various imaginations. As it is, I
confide in the fertility of their geniuses.'" — " Your
part of the contest, at least, was strenuously fought,
Eryximachus," said Socrates, " but if you had
been in the situation in which I am, or rather
shall be, after the discourse of Agathon, like me,
you would then have reason to fear, and be reduced
to your wits end." — " Socrates,"" said Agathon,
"wishes to confuse me with the enchantments of
his wit, sufficiently confused already with the ex-
pectation I see in the assembly in favour of my
discourse." — " I must have lost my memory, Aga-
thon," repHed Socrates, " if I imagined that you
could be disturbed by a few private persons, after
having witnessed your firmness and courage in
ascending the rostrum with the actors, and in
calmly reciting your compositions in the presence
of so great an assembly as that which decreed you
the prize of tragedy."—" What then, Socrates,''
retorted Agathon, " do you think me so full of
the theatre as to be ignorant that the judgment of
a few wise is more awful than that of a multi-
tude of others, to one who rightly balances the

112 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

value of their suffrages?" — " I should judge ill
indeed, Agathon," answered Socrates, " in thinking
you capable of any rude and unrefined conception,
for I well know that if you meet with any whom
you consider wise, you esteem such alone of more
value than all others. But we are far from being
entitled to this distinction, for we were also of that
assembly, and to be numbered among the rest.
But should you meet with any who are really wise,
you would be careful to say nothing in their pre-
sence which you thought they would not approve —
is it not so V — " Certainly," rephed Agathon. —
" You would not then exercise the same caution
in the presence of the multitude in which they
were included V — " My dear Agathon," said Phse-
drus, interrupting him, " if you answer all the
questions of Socrates, they will never have an end;
he will urge them without conscience so long as he
can get any person, especially one who is so beau-
tiful, to dispute with him. I own it delights me
to hear Socrates discuss ; but at present, I must
see that Love is not defrauded of the praise,
which it is my province to exact from each of you.
Pay the God his due, and then reason between
yourselves if you will."

'^ Your admonition is just, Phsedrus," replied
Agathon, *'nor need any reasoning I hold with

THE BANQUET OP PLATO. 113

Socrates impede me : we shall find many future op-
portunities for discussion. I will begin my discourse
then ; first having defined what ought to be the
subject of it. All who have already spoken seem to
me not so much to have praised Love, as to have feli-
citated mankind on the many advantages of which
that deity is the cause ; what he is, the author of
these great benefits, none have yet declared. There
is one mode alone of celebration which would com-
prehend the whole topic, namely, first to declare
what are those benefits, and then what he is who is
the author of those benefits, which are the subject of
our discourse. Love ought first to be praised, and
then his gifts declared. I assert, then, that although
all the Gods are immortally happy. Love, if I dare
trust my voice to express so awful a truth, is the
happiest, and most excellent, and the most beau-
tiful. That he is the most beautiful is evident ;
first, O Phsedrus, from this circumstancCj that he
is the youngest of the Gods ; and, secondly, from
his fleetness, and from his repugnance to all that
is old ; for he escapes with the swiftness of wings
from old age ; a thing in itself sufficiently swift,
since it overtakes us sooner than there is need ;
and which Love, who delights in the intercourse
of the young, hates, and in no manner can be
induced to enter into community with. The

114 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

ancient proverb, which says that like is attracted
by like, applies to the attributes of Love. I con-
cede many things to you, O Phaedrus, but this I
do not concede, that Love is more ancient than
Saturn and Jupiter. I assert that he is not only
the youngest of the Gods, but invested with ever-
lasting youth. Those ancient deeds among the
Gods recorded by Hesiod and Parmenides, if their
relations are to be considered as true, were pro-
duced not by Love, but by Necessity. For if Love
had been then in Heaven, those violent and san-
guinary crimes never would have taken place;
but there would ever have subsisted that affection
and peace, in which the Gods now live, under the
influence of Love.

" He is young, therefore, and being young is
tender and soft. There were need of some poet
like Homer to celebrate the delicacy and tender-
ness of Love. For Homer says, that the goddess
Calamity is delicate, and that her feet are tender.
' Her feet are soft,"* he says, ' for she treads not
upon the ground, but makes her path upon the
heads of men.' He gives as an evidence of her
tenderness, that she walks not upon that which is
hard, but that which is soft. The same evidence
is sufficient to make manifest the tenderness of
Love. For Love walks not upon the earth, nor

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 115

over the heads of men, which are not indeed very
soft ; but he dwells within, and treads on the softest
of existing things, having established his habitation
within the souls and inmost nature of Gods and
men ; not indeed in all souls^ — for wherever he
chances to find a hard and rugged disposition,
there he will not inhabit, but only where it is most
soft and tender. Of needs must he be the most
delicate of all things, who touches lightly with his
feet only the softest parts of those things which
are the softest of all.

" He is then the youngest and the most delicate
of all divinities ; and in addition to this, he is, as
it were, the most moist and liquid. For if he were
otherwise, he could not, as he does, fold himself
around every thing, and secretly flow out and into
every soul. His loveliness, that which Love pos-
sesses far beyond all other things, is a manifestation
of the liquid and flowing symmetry of his form ;
for between deformity and Love there is eternal
contrast and repugnance. His life is spent among
flowers, and this accounts for the immortal fairness
of his skin ; for the winged Love rests not in his
flight on any form, or within any soul the flower
of whose loveliness is faded, but there remains
most willingly where is the odour and radiance of
blossoms, yet un withered. Concerning the beauty

116 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

of the God, let this be sufficient, though many
things must remain unsaid. Let us next consider
the virtue and power of Love.

" What is most admirable in Love is, that he
neither inflicts nor endures injury in his relations
either with Gods or men. Nor if he suffers any
thing does he suffer it through violence, nor doing
any thing does he act it with violence, for Love is
never even touched with violence. Every one
willingly administers every thing to Love ; and that
which every one voluntarily concedes to another,
the laws, which are the kings of the republic, decree
that it is just for him to possess. In addition to
justice, Love participates in the highest temper-
ance ; for if temperance is defined to be the being
superior to and holding under dominion pleasures
and desires; then Love, than whom no pleasure is
more powerful, and who is thus more powerful than
all persuasions and delights, must be excellently
temperate. In power and valour Mars cannot
contend with Love : the love of Venus possesses
Mars ; the possessor is always superior to the
possessed, and he who subdues the most powerful
must of necessity be the most powerful of all.

'• The justice and temperance and valour of the
God have been thus declared; — there remains to
exhibit his wisdom. And first, that, like Eryxi-

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 117

machus, I may honour my own profession, the God
is a wise poet ; so wise that he can even make a
poet one who was not before : for every one, even
if before he were ever so undisciphned, becomes a
poet as soon as he is touched by Love ; — a suffi-
cient proof that Love is a great poet, and well
skilled in that science according to the discipline of
music. For what any one possesses not, or knows
not, that can he neither give nor teach another.
And who will deny that the divine poetry, by which
all living things are produced upon the earth, is
not harmonized by the wisdom of Love ? Is it not
evident that Love was the author of all the arts of
life with which we are acquainted, and that he
whose teacher has been Love, becomes eminent and
illustrious, whilst he who knows not Love, remains
forever unregarded and obscure ? Apollo invented
medicine, and divination, and archery, under the
guidance of desire and Love ; so that Apollo was
the disciple of Love. Through him the Muses
discovered the arts of literature, and Vulcan that
of moulding brass, and Minerva the loom, and
Jupiter the mystery of the dominion which he now
exercises over gods and men. So were the Gods
taught and disciplined by the love of that which is
beautiful ; for there is no love towards deformity.
*' At the origin of things, as I have before said,

118 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

many fearful deeds are reported to have been done
among the Gods, on account of the dominion of
Necessity. But so soon as this deity sprang forth
from the desire which forever tends in the universe
towards that which is lovely, then all blessings
descended upon all living things, human and divine.
Love seems to me, O Phsedrus, a divinity the most
beautiful and the best of all, and the author to all
others of the excellencies with which his own
nature is endowed. Nor can I restrain the poetic
enthusiasm which takes possession of my discourse,
and bids me declare that Love is the divinity who
creates peace among men, and calm upon the sea.
the windless silence of storms, repose and sleep in
sadness. Love divests us of all alienation from
each other, and fills our vacant hearts with over-
flowing sympathy ; he gathers us together in such
social meetings as we now dehght to celebrate, our
guardian and our guide in dances, and sacrifices,
and feasts. Yes, Love, who showers benignity
upon the world, and before whose presence all
harsh passions flee and perish ; the author of all
soft affections ; the destroyer of all ungentle
thoughts ; merciful, mild ; the object of the ad-
miration of the wise, and the delight of gods ;
possessed by the fortunate, and desired by the
unhappy, therefore unhappy because they possess

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 119

him not; the father of grace, and dehcacy, and
gentleness, anddehght, and persuasion, and desire;
the cherisher of all that is good, the abolisher of all
evil ; our most excellent pilot, defence, saviour and
guardian in labour and in fear, in desire and in
reason ; the ornament and governor of all things
human and divine ; the best, the loveliest ; in whose
footsteps every one ought to follow, celebrating him
excellently in song, and bearing each his part in
that divinest harmony which Love sings to all
things which live and are, soothing the troubled
minds of Gods and men. This, O Phsedrus, is what
I have to offer in praise of the divinity ; partly
composed, indeed, of thoughtless and playful fan-
cies, and partly of such serious ones, as I could well
command.

No sooner had Agathon ceased, than a loud
murmur of applause arose from all present ; so
becomingly had the fair youth spoken, both in
praise of the God, and in extenuation of himself.
Then Socrates, addressing Eryximachus, said,
" Was not my fear reasonable, son of Acumenus ?
Did I not divine what has, in fact, happened, —
that Agathon's discourse would be so wonderfully
beautiful, as to pre-occupy all interest in what I
should sayr — " You, indeed, divined well so far, O
Socrates,*"* said Eryximachus, "that Agathon would

120 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

speak eloquently, but not that, therefore, you
would be reduced to any difficulty.''—" How, my
good friend, can I or any one else be otherwise than
reduced to difficulty, who speak after a discourse
so various and so eloquent, and which otherwise
had been sufficiently wonderful, if, at the conclu-
sion, the splendour of the sentences, and the choice
selection of the expressions, had not struck all
the hearers with astonishment ; so that I, who well
know that I can never say anything nearly so
beautiful as this, would, if there had been any
escape, have run away for shame. The story of
Gorgias came into my mind, and I was afraid lest
in reality I should suffer what Homer describes ;
and lest Agathon, scanning my discourse with the
head of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to
stone for speechlessness. I immediately perceived
how ridiculously I had engaged myself with you
to assume a part in rendering praise to love, and
had boasted that I was well skilled in amatory mat-
ters, being so ignorant of the manner in which it is
becoming to render him honour, as I now perceive
myself to be. I, in my simplicity, imagined that
the truth ought to be spoken concerning each of
the topics of our praise, and that it would be suffi-
cient, choosing those which are the most honourable
to the God, to place them in as luminous an

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 121

arrangement as we could. I had, therefore, great
hopes that I should speak satisfactorily, being well
aware that I was acquainted with the true found-
ations of the praise which we have engaged to
render. But since, as it appears, our purpose
has been, not to render Love his due honour, but
to accumulate the most beautiful and the greatest
attributes of his divinity, whether they in truth
belong to it or not, and that the proposed question
is not how Love ought to be praised, but how we
should praise him most eloquently, my attempt
must of necessity fail. It is on this account, I
imagine, that in your discourses you have attri-
buted everything to Love, and have described him
to be the author of such and so great effects as, to
those who are ignorant of his true nature, may
exhibit him as the most beautiful and the best of
all things. Not, indeed, to those who know the
truth. Such praise has a splendid and imposing
effect, but as I am unacquainted with the art of
rendering it, my mind, which could not foresee what
would be required of me, absolves me from that
which my tongue promised. Farewell then, for
such praise I can never render.

" But if you desire, I will speak what I feel to
be true; and that I may not expose myself to
ridicule, I entreat you to consider that I speak

VOL. I. G

122 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

without entering into competition with those who
have preceded me. Consider, then, Phsedrus,
whether you will exact from me such a discourse,
containing the mere truth with respect to Love,
and composed of such unpremeditated expressions
as may chance to offer themselves to my mind." —
Phsedrus and the rest bade him speak in the
manner which he judged most befitting. — " Permit
me, then, O Phsedrus, to ask Agathon a few
questions, so that, confirmed by his agreement
with me, I may proceed." — " Willingly," replied
Phsedrus, '' ask."" — Then Socrates thus began : —

"I applaud, dear Agathon, the beginning of
your discourse, where you say, we ought first to
define and declare what Love is, and then his
works. This rule I particularly approve. But,
come, since you have given us a discourse of such
beauty and majesty concerning Love, you are able,
I doubt not, to explain this question, whether
Love is the love of something or nothing ? I do
not ask you of what parents Love is; for the
enquiry, of whether Love is the love of any father
or mother, would be sufiiciently ridiculous. But
if I were asking you to describe that which a father
is, I should ask, not whether a father was the love
of any one, but whether a father was the father of
any one or not ; you would undoubtedly reply, that

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 123

a father was the father of a son or daughter ; would
you not V — " Assuredly/' — " You would define a
mother in the same manner V — " Without doubt ?"
" Yet bear with me, and answer a few more ques-
tions, for I would learn from you that which I wish
to know. If I should enquire, in addition, is not
a brother, through the very nature of his relation,
the brother of some one f — " Certainly." — " Of a
brother or sister, is he not ? — " Without question."
— " Try to explain to me then the nature of Love ;
Love is the love of something or nothing ?" — " Of
something, certainly."

'' Observe and remember this concession. Tell
me yet farther, whether Love desires that of which
it is the Love or not V — " It desires it, assuredly."
— '* Whether possessing that which it desires and
loves, or not possessing it, does it desire and
love V — " Not possessing it, I should imagine."" —
" Observe now, whether it does not appear, that,
of necessity, desire desires that which it wants
and does not possess, and no longer desires that
which it no longer wants : this appears to me,
Agathon, of necessity to be ; how does it appear
to youT — " It appears so to me also." — " Would
any one who was already illustrious, desire to be
illustrious ; would any one already strong, desire
to be strong ? From what has already been
G 2

124 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

conceded, it follows that he would not. If any
one already strong, should desire to be strong ; or
any one already swift, should desire to be swift; or
any one already healthy, should desire to be
healthy, it must be concluded that they still desired
the advantages of which they already seemed pos-
sessed. To destroy the foundation of this error,
observe, Agathon, that each of these persons must
possess the several advantages in question, at the
moment present to our thoughts, whether he will
or no. And, now, is it possible that those
advantages should be at that time the objects of
liis desire ? For, if any one should say, being in
health, ' I desire to be in health ;' being rich, ' I
desire to be rich, and thus still desire those things
which I already possess ;' we might say to him,
' You, my friend, possess health, and strength, and
riches ; you do not desire to possess now, but to
continue to possess them in future ; for, whether
you will or no, they now belong to you. Consider
then, whether, when you say that you desire
things present to you, and in your own possession,
you say anything else than that you desire the
advantages to be for the future also in your pos-
session."* What else could he reply V — " Nothing,
indeed." — " Is not Love, then, the love of that
which is not within its reach, and which cannot

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 125

hold ill security, for the future, those things of which
it obtains a present and transitory possession V —
" Evidently." — "Love, therefore, and every thing
else that desires anything, desires that which is
absent and beyond his reach, that which it has not,
that which is not itself, that which it wants ; such
are the things of which there are desire and
love." — " Assuredly."

" Come," said Socrates, " let us review your
concessions. Is Love anything else than the love
first of something ; and, secondly, of those things
of which it has need T' — " Nothing." — " Now, re-
member of those things you said in your discourse,
that Love was the love — if you wish I will remind
you. 1 think you said something of this kind, that
all the affairs of the gods were admirably disposed
through the love of the things which are beautiful ;
for, there was no love of things deformed ; did you
not say so ?"' — " I confess that 1 did." — " You said
what was most likely to be true, my friend; and if
the matter be so, the love of beauty must be one
thing, and the love of deformity another." — " Cer-
tainly."— " It is conceded, then, that Love loves
that which he wants but possesses not l' — " Yes,
certainly." — " But Love wants and does not pos-
sess beauty T' — "Indeed it must necessarily follow."
— " What, then ! call you that beautiful which has

126 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

need of beauty and possesses notf — "Assuredly
no."" — " Do you still assert, then, that Love is
beautiful, if all that we have said be truef' — " In-
deed, Socrates," said Agathon, " I am in danger
of being convicted of ignorance, with respect to all
that I then spoke." — " You spoke most eloquently,
my dear Agathon ; but bear with my questions yet
a moment. You admit that things which are good
are also beautiful V — " No doubt." — " If Love, then,
be in want of beautiful things, and things which are
good are beautiful, he must be in want of things
which are good?" — "I cannot refute your arguments,
Socrates." — " You cannot refute truth, my dear
Agathon : to refute Socrates is nothing difficult.

"But I will dismiss these questionings. At
present let me endeavour, to the best of my power,
to repeat to you, on the basis of the points which
have been agreed upon between me and Agathon, a
discourse concerning Love, which I formerly heard
from the prophetess Diotima, who was profoundly
skilled in this and many other doctrines, and who,
ten years before the pestilence, procured to the
Athenians, through their sacrifices, a delay of the
disease ; for it was she who taught me the science
of things relating to Love.

" As you well remarked, Agathon, we ought to
declare who and what is Love, and then his works.

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 127

It is easiest to relate them in the same order, as
the foreign prophetess observed when, questioning
me, she related them. For I said to her much the
same things that Agathon has just said to me —
that Love was a great deity, and that he was
beautiful ; and she refuted me with the same reasons
as I have employed to refute Agathon, compelling
me to infer that he was neither beautiful nor good,
as I said. — ' What, then,"* I objected, ' O Diotima,
is Love ugly and evil V — ' Good words, I entreat
you,' said Diotima ; ' do you think that every thing
which is not beautiful, must of necessity be ugly."
— ' Certainly.' — * And every thing that is not wise,
ignorant ? Do you not perceive that there is
something between ignorance and wisdom V —
' What is that V — * To have a right opinion or con-
jecture. Observe, that this kind of opinion, for
which no reason can be rendered, cannot be called
knowledge ; for how can that be called knowledge,
which is without evidence or reason ? Nor igno-
rance, on the other hand ; for how can that be
called ignorance which arrives at the persuasion
of that which it really is ? A right opinion is
something between understanding and ignorance.' —
I confessed that what she alleged was true. — ' Do
not then say,' she continued, 'that what is not
beautiful is of necessity deformed, nor what is not

128 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

good is of necessity evil ; nor, since you have
confessed that Love is neither beautiful nor good,
infer, therefore, that he is deformed or evil, but
rather something intermediate.'

" ' But,' I said, ' love is confessed by all to be
a great God.' — ' Do you mean, when you say all,
all those who know, or those who know not, what
they say V — ' All collectively .^ — * And how can
that be, Socrates V said she laughing ; ' how can
he be acknowledged to be a great God, by those
who assert that he is not even a God at all V —
' And who are they V I said. — ' You for one, and
I for another."* — ' How can you say that, Diotima V
— ' Easily,' she replied, ' and with truth ; for tell
me, do you not own that all the Gods are beautiful
and happy ? or will you presume to maintain that
any God is otherwise.' — ' By Jupiter, not I P —
' Do you not call those alone happy who possess
all things that are beautiful and good V — ' Cer-
tainly.'— ' You have confessed that Love, through
his desire for things beautiful and good, possesses
not those materials of happiness.' — ' Indeed such was
my concession.' — ' But how can we conceive a God
to be without the possession of what is beautiful
and good V — ' In no manner, I confess.' — ' Observe,
then, that you do not consider Love to be a God.' —
' What, then,* I said, ' is Love a mortal f — ' By no

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 12.9

means.' — "But what, then T — 'Like those things
which I have before instanced, he is neither mortal
nor immortal, but something intermediate."* — 'What
is that, O, Diotima T — ' A great dsenion, Socrates ;
and every thing dsemoniacal holds an intermediate
place between what is divine and what is mortal.'
" * What is his power and nature V I enquired. —
' He interprets and makes a communication be-
tween divine and human things, conveying the
prayers and sacrifices of men to the Gods, and
communicating the commands and directions con-
cerning the mode of worship most pleasing to
them, from Gods to men. He fills up that inter-
mediate space between these two classes of beings,
so as to bind together, by his own power, the
whole universe of things. Through him subsist all
divination, and the science of sacred things as it
relates to sacrifices, and expiations, and disen-
chantments, and prophecy, and magic. The divine
nature cannot immediately communicate with what
is human, but all that intercourse and converse
which is conceded by the Gods to men, both whilst
they sleep and when they wake, subsists through
the intervention of Love ; and he who is wise in
the science of this intercourse is supremely happy,
and participates in the dsem^oniacal nature ; whilst
he who is wise in any other science or art, remains
g3

130 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

a mere ordinary slave. These daemons are, Indeed,
many and various, and one of them Is Love."*

" ' Who are the parents of Love V I enquired. —
* The history of what you ask,' replied Diotlma,
' is somewhat long; nevertheless I will explain it to
you. On the birth of Venus the Gods celebrated a
great feast, and among them came Plenty, the son
of Metis. After supper. Poverty, observing the pro-
fusion, came to beg, and stood beside the door.
Plenty being drunk with nectar, for wine was not
yet invented, went out into Jupiter's garden, and
fell into a deep sleep. Poverty wishing to have a
child by Plenty, on account of her low estate, lay
down by him, and from his embraces conceived
Love. Love is, therefore, the follower and servant
of Venus, because he was conceived at her birth,
and because by nature he is a lover of all that is
beautiful, and Venus was beautiful. And since
Love is the child of Poverty and Plenty, his nature
and fortune participate in that of his parents. He
is for ever poor, and so far from being delicate and
beautiful, as mankind imagine, he is squalid and
withered ; he flies low along the ground, and is
homeless and unsandalled ; he sleeps without cover-
ing before the doors, and in the unsheltered streets ;
possessing thus far his mother''s nature, that he is
ever the companion of want. But, inasmuch as he

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 131

participates in that of his father, he is for ever
scheming to obtain things which are good and
beautiful ; he is fearless, vehement, and strong ; a
dreadful hunter, for ever weaving some new con-
trivance ; exceedingly cautious and prudent, and
full of resources ; he is also, during his whole
existence, a philosopher, a powerful enchanter, a
wizard, and a subtle sophist. And, as his nature
is neither mortal nor immortal, on the same day
when he is fortunate and successful, he will at one
time flourish, and then die away, and then, accord-
ing to his father's nature, again revive. All that
he acquires perpetually flows away from him, so
that Love is never either rich or poor, and holding
for ever an intermediate state between ignorance
and wisdom. The case stands thus ; — no God phi-
losophizes or desires to become wise, for he is wise ;
nor, if there exist any other being who is wise,
does he philosophize. Nor do the ignorant philo-
sophize, for they desire not to become wise ; for
this is the evil of ignorance, that he who has
neither intelligence, nor virtue, nor delicacy of
sentiment, imagines that he possesses all those
things sufficiently. He seeks not, therefore, that
possession, of whose want he is not aware.' —
' Who, then, O Diotima,' I enquired, ' are philo-
sophers, if they are neither the ignorant nor the

132 THE BANQUET OF PLATO,

wise V — ' It is evident, even to a child, that they
are those intermediate persons, among whom is
Love. For Wisdom is one of the most beautiful
of all things ; Love is that which thirsts for the
beautiful, so that Love is of necessity a philosopher,
philosophy being an intermediate state between
ignorance and wisdom. His parentage accounts
for his condition, being the child of a wise and well
provided father, and of a mother both ignorant
and poor.

" ' Such is the dsemoniacal nature, my dear
Socrates ; nor do I wonder at your error concern-
ing Love, for you thought, as I conjecture from
what you say, that Love was not the lover but the
beloved, and thence, well concluded that he must
be supremely beautiful; for that which is the
object of Love must indeed be fair, and delicate,
and perfect, and most happy ; but Love inherits,
as I have declared, a totally opposite nature.' —
' Your words have persuasion in them, O stranger,'
I said ; ' be it as you say. But this Love, what
advantages does he afford to men V — ' I will pro-
ceed to explain it to you, Socrates. Love being
such and so produced as I have described, is,
indeed, as you say, the love of things which are
beautiful. But if any one should ask us, saying ;
O Socrates and Diotima, why is Love the love of

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 183

beautiful things ? Or, in plainer words, what does
the lover of that which is beautiful, love in the
object of his love, and seek from it V — ' He seeks,"*
I said, interrupting her, ' the property and posses-
sion of it.' — ' But that,' she replied, 'might still be
met with another question, What has he, who
possesses that which is beautiful V — ' Indeed, I
cannot immediately reply.' — ' But, if changing the
beautiful for good, any one should enquire,— I ask,
O Socrates, what is that which he who loves that
which is good, loves in the object of his love V —
' To be in his possession,' I replied. — ' And wliat
has he, who has the possession of good V — ' This
question is of easier solution, he is happy.' — ' Those
who are happy, then, are happy through the pos-
session ; and it is useless to enquire what he desires,
who desires to be happy ; the question seems to
have a complete reply. But do you think that this
wish and this love are common to all men, and that
all desire, that that which is good should be for ever
present to them V — ' Certainly, common to all.' —
' Why do we not say then, Socrates, that every
one loves ? if, indeed, all love perpetually the same
thing I But we say that some love, and some do
not.' — ' Indeed I wonder why it is so.' — ' Wonder
not,' said Diotima, 'for we select a particular
species of love, and apply to it distinctively tlie
appellation of that which is universal.'

134 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

" ' Give me an example of such a select applica-
tion."— ' Poetry; which is a general name signifying
every cause whereby anything proceeds from that
which is not, into that which is; so that the exercise
of every inventive art is poetry, and all such artists
poets. Yet they are not called poets, but distin-
guished by other names ; and one portion or species
of poetry, that which has relation to music and
rhythm, is divided from all others, and known by the
name belonging to all. For this is alone properly
called poetry, and those who exercise the art of
this species of poetry, poets. So, with respect to
Love. Love is indeed universally all that earnest
desire for the possession of happiness and that
which is good ; the greatest and the subtlest love,
and which inhabits the heart of every living being;
but those who seek this object through the acquire-
ment of wealth, or the exercise of the gymnastic
arts, or philosophy, are not said to love, nor are
called lovers ; one species alone is called love, and
those alone are said to be lovers, and to love, who
seek the attainment of the universal desire through
one species of love, which is peculiarly distinguished
by the name belonging to the whole. It is asserted
by some, that they love, who are seeking the lost
half of their divided being. But I assert, that
Love is neither the love of half nor of the whole,

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 135

unless, my friend, it meets with that which is
good ; since men wiUingly cut off their own hands
and feet, if they think that they are the cause of evil
to them. Nor do they cherish and embrace that
which may belong to themselves, merely because it
is their own ; unless, indeed, any one should choose
to say, that that which is good is attached to his
own nature and is his own, whilst that which is
evil is foreign and accidental ; but love nothing
but that which is good. Does it not appear so to
you V — ' Assuredly.' — ' Can we then simply affirm
that men love that which is good V — ' Without
doubt."* — ' What, then, must we not add, that, in
addition to loving that which is good, they love
that it should be present to themselves f — ' Indeed
that must be added." — ' And not merely that it
should be present, but that it should ever be pre-
sent V — ' This also must be added.'

" ' Love, then, is collectively the desire in men
that good should be for ever present to them." —
' Most true.' — ' Since this is the general definition
of Love, can you explain in what mode of attaining
its object, and in what species of actions, does Love
peculiarly consist V — ' If I knew what you ask, O
Diotima, I should not have so much wondered at
your wisdom, nor have sought you out for the purpose
of deriving improvement from your instructions T

136 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

— ' I will tell you,' she replied : ' Love is the desire
of generation in the beautiful, both with relation
to the body and the soul/ — ' I must be a diviner to
comprehend what you say, for, being such as I am,
I confess that I do not understand it.' — ' But I
will explain it more clearly. The bodies and the
souls of all human beings are alike pregnant with
their future progeny, and when we arrive at a cer-
tain age, our nature impels us to bring forth and
propagate. This nature is unable to produce in
that which is deformed, but it can produce in that
which is beautiful. The intercourse of the male
and female in generation, a divine w ork, through
pregnancy and production, is, as it were, something
immortal in mortality. These things cannot take
place in that which is incongruous ; for that which
is deformed is incongruous, but that which is beau-
tiful is congruous with what is mortal and divine.
Beauty is, therefore, the fate, and the Juno Lucina
to generation. Wherefore, whenever that which is
pregnant with the generative principle, approaches
that which is beautiful, it becomes transported
with delight, and is poured forth in overflowing
pleasure, and propagates. But when it approaches
that which is deformed it is contracted by sadness,
and being repelled and checked, it does not pro-
duce, but retains unwillingly that with which it

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 137

is pregnant. Wherefore, to one pregnant, and,
as it were, already bursting with the load of
his desire, the impulse towards that which is beau-
tiful is intense, on account of the great pain of
retaining that which he has conceived. Love, then,
O Socrates, is not as you imagine the love of the
beautiful."*-—' What, then T— ' Of generation and
production in the beautiful.' — ' Why then of gene-
ration V — ' Generation is something eternal and
immortal in mortality. It necessarily, from what
has been confessed, follows, that we must desire
immortality together with what is good, since Love
is the desire that good be for ever present to us.
Of necessity Love must also be the desire of
immortality."*

" Diotima taught me all this doctrine in the
discourse we had together concerning Love ; and,
in addition, she enquired, ' What do you think,
Socrates, is the cause of this love and desire ? Do
you not perceive how all animals, both those of the
earth and of the air, are affected when they desire
the propagation of their species, affected even to
weakness and disease by the impulse of their love ;
first, longing to be mixed with each other, and then
seeking nourishment for their offspring, so that the
feeblest are ready to contend with the strongest in
obedience to this law, and to die for the sake of

138

THE BANQUET OP PLATO.

their young, or to waste away with hunger, and
do or suffer anything so that they may not want
nourishment. It might be said that human beings
do these things through reason, but can you explain
why other animals are thus affected through loveT
— I confessed that I did not know. — ' Do you
imagine yourself,' said she, 'to be skilful in the
science of Love, if you are ignorant of these things f
— ' As I said before, O Diotima, I come to you,
well knowing how much I am in need of a teacher.
But explain to me, I entreat you, the cause of these
things, and of the other things relating to Love.' — •
' If,' said Diotima, ' you believe that Love is of the
same nature as we have mutually agreed upon,
wonder not that such are its effects. For the
mortal nature seeks, so far as it is able, to become
deathless and eternal. But it can only accomplish
this desire by generation, which for ever leaves
another new in place of the old. For, although
each human being be severally said to live, and be
the same from youth to old age, yet, that which is
called the same, never contains within itself the
same things, but always is becoming new by the
loss and change of that which it possessed before ;
both the hair, and the flesh, and the bones, and the
entire body.

" ' And not only does this change take place in

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 139

the body, but also with respect to the soul. Man-
ners, morals, opinions, desires, pleasures, sorrows,
fears ; none of these ever remain unchanged in the
same persons ; but some die away, and others are
produced. And, what is yet more strange is, that
not only does some knowledge spring up, and
another decay, and that we are never the same
with respect to our knowledge, but that each several
object of our thoughts suffers the same revolution.
That which is called meditation, or the exercise of
memory, is the science of the escape or depar-
ture of memory ; for, forgetfulness is the going out
of knowledge; and meditation, calling up a new
memory in the place of that which has departed,
preserves knowledge ; so that, though for ever dis-
placed and restored, it seems to be the same. In
this manner every thing mortal is preserved : not
that it is constant and eternal, like that which is
divine ; but that in the place of what has grown old
and is departed, it leaves another new like that
which it was itself. By this contrivance, O
Socrates, does what is mortal, the body and all
other things, partake of immortality ; that which is
immortal, is immortal in another manner. Wonder
not, then, if every thing by nature cherishes that
which was produced from itself, for this earnest
Love is a tendency towards eternity.''

140 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

" Having heard this discourse, I was astonished,
and asked, ' Can these things be true, O wisest
Diotima V And she, Hke an accomplished sophist,
said, ' Know well, O Socrates, that if you only
regard that love of glory which inspires men, you
will wonder at your own unskilfulness in not having
discovered all that I now declare. Observe with
how vehement a desire they are affected to become
illustrious and to prolong their glory into immortal
time, to attain which object, far more ardently than
for the sake of their children, all men are ready to
engage in many dangers, and expend their fortunes,
and submit to any labours and incur any death.
Do you believe that Alcestis would have died in
the place of Admetus, or Achilles for the revenge
of Patroclus, or Codrus for the kingdom of his
posterity, if they had not believed that the immor-
tal memory of their actions, which we now cherish,
would have remained after their death ? Far
otherwise ; all such deeds are done for the sake of
ever-living virtue, and this immortal glory which
they have obtained ; and inasmuch as any one is
of an excellent nature, so much the more is he
impelled to attain this reward. For they love what
is immortal.

" ' Those whose bodies alone are pregnant with
this principle of immortality are attracted by

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 141

women, seeking through the production of children
what they imagine to be happiness and immortahty
and an enduring remembrance ; but they whose
souls are far more pregnant than their bodies, con-
ceive and produce that which is more suitable to
the soul. What is suitable to the soul ? Intelli-
gence, and every other power and excellence of
the mind ; of which all poets, and all other artists
who are creative and inventive, are the authors.
The greatest and most admirable wisdom is that
which regulates the government of families and states,
and which is called moderation and justice. Who-
soever, therefore, from his youth feels his soul
pregnant with the conception of these excellences,
is divine ; and when due time arrives, desires to
bring forth; and wandering about, he seeks the
beautiful in which he may propagate what he
has conceived; for there is no generation in
that which is deformed ; he embraces those bodies
which are beautiful rather than those which
are deformed, in obedience to the principle which
is within him, which is ever seeking to per-
petuate itself. And if he meets, in conjunction
with loveliness of form, a beautiful, generous
and gentle soul, he embraces both at once, and
immediately undertakes to educate this object of
his love, and is inspired with an overflowing persua-

142 THE BANQUET OP PLATO,

sion to declare what is virtue, and what he ought
to be who would attain to its possession, and what
are the duties which it exacts. For, by the inter-
course with, and as it were, the very touch of that
which is beautiful, he brings forth and produces
what he had formerly conceived ; and nourishes
and educates that which is thus produced together
with the object of his love, whose image, whether
absent or present, is never divided from his
mind. So that those who are thus united are
linked by a nobler community and a firmer love,
as being the common parents of a lovelier and more
endearing progeny than the parents of other children.
And every one who considers what posterity Homer
and Hesiod, and the other great poets, have left
behind them, the sources of their own immortal
memory and renown, or what children of his soul
Lycurgus has appointed to be the guardians, not
only of Lacedsemon, but of all Greece ; or what an
illustrious progeny of laws Solon has produced,
and how many admirable achievements, both
among the Greeks and Barbarians, men have
left as the pledges of that love which subsisted
between them and the beautiful, would choose
rather to be the parent of such children than
those in a human shape. For divine honours have
often been rendered to them on account of such

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 148

children, but on account of those in human shape,
never.

*' ' Your own meditation, O Socrates, might per-
haps have initiated you in all these things which I
have already taught you on the subject of Love. But
those perfect and sublime ends to which these are
only the means, I know not that you would have
been competent to discover. I will declare them,
therefore, and will render them as intelligible as
possible : do you meanwhile strain all your atten-
tion to trace the obscure depth of the subject. He
who aspires to love rightly, ought from his earliest
youth to seek an intercourse with beautiful forms,
and first to make a single form the object of his
love, and therein to generate intellectual excel-
lencies. He ought, then, to consider that beauty
in whatever form it resides is the brother of that
beauty which subsists in another form ; and if he
ought to pursue that which is beautiful in form,
it would be absurd to imagine that beauty is not
one and the same thing in all forms, and would
therefore remit much of his ardent preference
towards one, through his perception of the multi-
tude of claims upon his love. In addition, he
would consider the beauty which is in souls more
excellent that that which is in form. So that one
endowed with an admirable soul, even though the

144 THE BANQUET OP PLATO.

flower of the form were withered, would suffice him
as the object of his love and care, and the com-
panion with whom he might seek and produce such
conclusions as tend to the improvement of youth ;
so that it might be led to observe the beauty and
the conformity which there is in the observation
of its duties and the laws, and to esteem little
the mere beauty of the outward form. -He
"^'^ / y would then conduct his pupil to science, so that
he might look upon the loveliness of wisdom ; and
that contemplating thus the universal beauty, no
^/ji^^^*.^*^ longer I would he unworthily and meanly enslave
''^* ~ himself to the attractions of one form in love,

nor one subject of discipline or science, but
w^ould turn towards the wide ocean of intel-
lectual beauty, and from the sight of the lovely
and majestic forms which it contains, would
abundantly bring forth his conceptions in phi-
losophy; until, strengthened and confirmed, he
should at length steadily contemplate one
science, which is the science of this universal
beauty.

" ' Attempt, I entreat you, to mark what I say
with as keen an observation as you can. He who
has been disciplined to this point in Love, by con-
templating beautiful objects gradually, and in their
order, now arriving at the end of all that concerns

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 145

Love, on a sudden beholds a beauty wonderful in
its nature. This is it, O Socrates, for the sake of
which all the former labours were endured. It is
eternal, unproduced, indestructible; neither sub-
ject to increase nor decay : not, like other things,
partly beautiful and partly deformed ; not at one
time beautiful and at another time not ; not beau-
tiful in relation to one thing and deformed in rela-
tion to another ; not here beautiful and there
deformed ; not beautiful in the estimation of one
person and deformed in that of another ; nor can
this supreme beauty be figured to the imagination
like a beautiful face, or beautiful hands, or any
portion of the body, nor like any discourse, nor any
science. Nor does it subsist in any other that
lives or is, either in earth, or in heaven, or in any
other place ; but it is eternally uniform and con-
sistent, and monoeidic with itself. All other
things are beautiful through a participation of it,
with this condition, that although they are subject
to production and decay, it never becomes more
or less, or endures any change. When any one,
ascending from a correct system of Love, begins to
contemplate this supreme beauty, he already touches
the consummation of his labour. For such as dis-
cipline themselves upon this system, or are con-
ducted by another beginning to ascend through

VOL. I. H

146 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

these transitory objects which are beautiful, to-
wards that which is beauty itself, proceeding as
on steps from the love of one form to that of two,
and from that of two, to that of all forms which are
beautiful ; and from beautiful forms to beautiful
habits and institutions, and from institutions to
beautiful doctrines ; until, from the meditation of
many doctrines, they arrive at that which is nothing
else than the doctrine of the supreme beauty itself,
in the knowledge and contemplation of which at
length they repose.

" ' Such a life as this, my dear Socrates,' ex-
claimed the stranger Prophetess, ' spent in the
contemplation of the beautiful, is the life for men
to live ; which if you chance ever to experience,
you will esteem far beyond gold and rich garments,
and even those lovely persons whom you and many
others now gaze on with astonishment, and are
prepared neither to eat nor drink so that you may
behold and live for ever with these objects of your
love ! What then shall we imagine to be the
aspect of the supreme beauty itself, simple, pure,
uncontaminated with the intermixture of human
flesh and colours, and all other idle and unreal
shapes attendant on mortality ; the divine, the ori-
ginal, the supreme, the monoeidic beautiful itself ?
AV'hat must be the life of him who dwells with and

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 147

gazes on that which it becomes us all to seek I
Think you not that to him alone is accorded the
prerogative of bringing forth, not images and
shadows of virtue, for he is in contact not with a
shadow but with reality ; with virtue itself, in the
production and nourishment of which he becomes
dear to the Gods, and if such a privilege is conceded
to any human being, himself immortal.''

'' Such, O Phsedrus, and my other friends, was
what Diotima said. And being persuaded by her
words, I have since occupied myself in attempting
to persuade others, that it is not easy to find a
better assistant than Love in seeking to communi-
cate immortality to our human natures. Where-
fore I exhort every one to honour Love ; I hold
him in honour, and chiefly exercise myself in ama-
tory matters, and exhort others to do so ; and now
and ever do I praise the power and excellence of
Love, in the best manner that I can. Let this
discourse, if it pleases you, Phsedrus, be considered
as an encomium of Love ; or call it by what other
name you will.^'

The whole assembly praised his discourse, and
Aristophanes was on the point of making some
remarks on the allusion made by Socrates to him
in a part of his discourse, when suddenly they heard
u loud knocking at the door of the vestibule, and
h2

148 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

a clamour as of revellers, attended by a flute-
player.—" Go, boys,'' said Agathon, " and see who
is there : if they are any of our friends, call them
in ; if not, say that we have already done drink*
ing." — A minute afterwards, they heard the voice
of Alcibiades in the vestibule excessively drunk
and roaring out : — " Where is Agathon ? Lead
me to Agathon ! " — The flute-player, and some of
his companions then led him in, and placed him
against the door-post, crowned with a thick crown
of ivy and violets, and having a quantity of fillets
on his head. — " My friends," he cried out, " hail !
I am excessively drunk already, but TU drink with
you, if you will. If not, we will go away after
having crowned Agathon, for which purpose I
came. I assure you that I could not come yester-
day, but I am now here with these fillets round
my temples, that from my own head I may crown
his who, with your leave, is the most beautiful
and wisest of men. Are you laughing at me
because I am drunk ? Ay, I know what I say is
true, whether you laugh or not. But tell me at
once, whether I shall come in, or no. Will you
drink with me V

Agathon and the whole party desired him to
come in, and recline among them ; so he came
in, led by his companions. He then unbound his

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 149

fillets that he might crown Agathon, and though
Socrates was just before his eyes, he did not see
him, but sat down by Agathon, between Socrates
and him, for Socrates moved out of the way to make
room for him. When he sat down, he embraced
Agathon and crowned him ; and Agathon desired
the slaves to untie his sandals, that he might make
a third, and recline on the same couch. " By all
means," said Alcibiades, " but what third com-
panion have we here?" And. at the same time
turning round and seeing Socrates, he leaped up
and cried out : — " O Hercules ! what have we
here ? You, Socrates, lying in ambush for me
wherever I go ! and meeting me just as you always
do, when I least expected to see you ! And, now,
what are you come here for? Why have you
chosen to recline exactly in this place, and not
near Aristophanes, or any one else who is, or
wishes to be ridiculous, but have contrived to take
your place beside the most delightful person of
the whole party?" — "Agathon," said Socrates,
*'see if you cannot defend me. I declare my
friendship for this man is a bad business: from
the moment that I first began to know him I have
never been permitted to converse with, or so much
as to look upon any one else. If I do, he is so
jealous and suspicious that he does the most extra-

150 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

vagant things, and hardly refrains from beating

me. I entreat you to prevent him from doing

anything of that kind at present. Procure a recon-

" ciliation : or, if- he perseveres in attempting any

,f> ' violence, I entreat you to defend me."-^" Indeed,'"*

1^ , said Alcibiades, " I will not be reconciled to you ;

r?

■ I shall find another opportunity to punish you for
V»Z / this. But now,"" said he, addressing Agathon,
" lend me some of those fillets, that I may crown
the wonderful head of this fellow, lest I incur the
blame, that having crowned you, I neglected to
crown him who conquers all men with his discourses,
not yesterday alone as you did, but ever.'"*

Saying this he took the fillets, and having bound
the head of Socrates, and again having reclined,
said : " Come, my friends, you seem to be sober
enough. You must not flinch, but drink, for that
was your agreement with me before I came in. I
choose as president, until you have drunk enough —
myself. Come, Agathon, if you have got a great
goblet, fetch it out. But no matter, that wine-
cooler will do ; bring it, boy ! " And observing
that it held more than eight cups, he first drank
it off, and then ordered it to be filled for Socrates,
and said : — " Observe, my friends, I cannot invent
any scheme against Socrates, for he will drink as
much as any one desires him, and not be in the

THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

151

least drunk." Socrates, after the boy had filled
up, drank it off; and Eryximachus said : — " Shall
we then have no conversation or singing over our
cups, but drink down stupidly, just as if we were
thirsty?"" And Alcibiades said: "Ah, Eryxima-
chus, I did not see you before ; hail, you excellent
son of a wise and excellent father ! '"* — " Hail to
you also,"" replied Eryximachus, " but what shall
we do ? "" — " Whatever you command, for we ought
to submit to your directions ; a physician is worth
a hundred common men. Command us as you
please."" — "Listen then," said Eryximachus, *' be-
fore you came in, each of us had agreed to deliver
as eloquent a discourse as he could in praise of
Love, beginning at the right hand ; all the rest of
us have fulfilled our engagement; you have not
spoken, and yet have drunk with us : you ought
to bear your part in the discussion ; and having
done so, command what you please to Socrates,
who shall have the privilege of doing so to his
right-hand neighbour, and so on to the others.'' —
'' Indeed, there appears some justice in your pro-
posal, Eryximachus, though it is rather unfair to
induce a drunken man to set his discourse in com-
petition with that of those who are sober. And,
besides, did Socrates really persuade you that
what he just said about me was true, or do you

.,,^t>^'^-^

152 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

not know that matters are in fact exactly the

reverse of his representation ? For I seriously

believe that, should I praise in his presence,

" t^^j'i"'*'*^be he god or man, any other beside himself, he

S ^^ "Would not keep his hands off me. /. But I assure

\j*jL^-^ I you, Socrates, I will praise no one beside yourself

Ua.^^^"^' inyour presence."

f - 4Mi^^ ^ ^^T)o SO, then," said Eryximachus, "praise Socrates
^^^ il,^ if you please." — " What," said Alcibiades, " shall
k^ki*-'***' I attack him, and punish him before you all?' —
r^'r^^ '' What have you got into your head now," said
/ ^^ '*« Socrates, " are you going to expose me to ridicule,
and to misrepresent me ? Or what are you going
to do ?" — " I will only speak the truth ; will you per-
mit me on this condition?" — " I not only permit, but
exhort you to say all the truth you know," replied
Socrates. " I obey you willingly," said Alcibiades,
" and if I advance anything untrue, do you, if you
please, interrupt me, and convict me of misrepre-
sentation, for I would never willingly speak falsely.
And bear with me if I do not relate things in their
order, but just as I remember them, for it is not
easy for a man in my present condition to enume-
rate systematically all your singularities.

" I will begin the praise of Socrates by comparing
him to a certain statue. Perhaps he will think
that this statue is introduced for the sake of ridi-

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 153

cule, but I assure you that it is necessary for the
illustration of truth. I assert, then, that Socrates
is exactly like those Silenuses that sit in the sculp-
tors' shops, and which are carved holding flutes or
pipes, but which, when divided in two, are found
to contain withinside the images of the gods. 1
assert that Socrates is like the satyr ^larsyas.
That your form and appearance are like these
satyr's, I think that even you will not venture to
deny ; and how like you are to them in all other
things, now hear. Are you not scornful and
petulant ? If you deny this, I will bring witnesses.
Are you not a piper, and far more wonderful a one
than he ? For Marsyas, and whoever now pipes
the music that he taught, for that music which is
of heaven, and described as being taught by Marsyas,
enchants men through the power of the mouth.
For if any musician, be he skilful or not, awakens
this music, it alone enables him to retain the minds
of men, and from the divinity of its nature makes
evident those who are in want of the gods and
initiation. You differ only from Marsyas in this
circumstance, that you effect without instruments,
by mere words, all that he can do. For when we
hear Pericles, or any other accomplished orator,
deliver a discourse, no one, as it were, cares any
thing about it. But when any one hears you, or
h3

154 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

even your words related by another, though ever
so rude and unskilful a speaker, be that person a
woman, man or child, we are struck and retained,
as it were, by the discourse clinging to our mind.

" If I was not afraid that I am a great deal too
drunk, I would confirm to you by an oath the
strange effects which I assure you I have suffered
from his words, and suffer still ; for when I hear
him speak, my heart leaps up far more than the
hearts of those who celebrate the Corybantic myste-
ries ; my tears are poured out as he talks, a thing
I have seen happen to many others beside myself.
I have heard Pericles and other excellent orators,
and have been pleased with their discourses, but
I suffered nothing of this kind ; nor was my soul
ever on those occasions disturbed and filled with
self-reproach, as if it were slavishly laid prostrate.
But this Marsyas here has often affected me in the
w^ay I describe, until the life which I lead seemed
hardly worth living. Do not deny it, Socrates, for
I well know that if even now I chose to listen to
you, I could not resist, but should again suffer the
same effects. For, my friends, he forces me to
confess that while I myself am still in want of
many things, I neglect my own necessities, and
attend to those of the Athenians. I stop my ears,
therefore, as from the Syrens, and flee away as

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 155

fast as possible, that I may not sit down beside
him and grow old in listening to his talk. For
this man has reduced me to feel the sentiment of
shame, which I imagine no one would readily believe
was in me ; he alone inspires me with remorse and
awe. For I feel in his presence my incapacity of
refuting what he says, or of refusing to do that
which he directs ; but when I depart from him,
the glory which the multitude confers overwhelms
me. I escape, therefore, and hide myself from him,
and when I see him I am overwhelmed with humi-
liation, because I have neglected to do what I have
confessed to him ought to be done ; and often and
often have I wished that he were no longer to be
seen among men. But if that were to happen, I
well know that I should suffer far greater pain ; so
that where I can turn, or what I can do with this
man, I know not. All this have I and many
others suffered from the pipings of this satyr.

" And observe, how like he is to what I said,
and what a wonderful power he possesses. Know
that there is not one of you who is aware of the
real nature of Socrates ; but since I have begun, I
will make him plain to you. You observe how
passionately Socrates affects the intimacy of those
who are beautiful, and how ignorant he professes
himself to be ; appearances in themselves exces-

156 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

sively Silenic. This, my friends, is the external
form with which, Hke one of the sculptured Sileni,
he has clothed himself ; for if you open him, you
will find within admirable temperance and wisdom.
For he cares not for mere beauty, but despises
more than any one can imagine all external pos-
sessions, whether it be beauty or wealth, or glory,
or any other thing for which the multitude felicitates
the possessor. He esteems these things and us
who honour them, as nothing, and lives among
men, making all the objects of their admiration the
playthings of his irony. But I know not if any one
of you have ever seen the divine images which are
within, when he has been opened and is serious.
I have seen them, and they are so supremely
beautiful, so golden, so divine, and wonderful, that
every thing which Socrates commands surely ought
to be obeyed, even like the voice of a God.

>N

" At one,.time we were fellow-soldiers, and had
our mess together in the camp before Potidaea.
Socrates there overcame not only me, but every
one beside, in endurance of toils : when, as often
happens in a campaign, we were reduced to few
provisions, there were none who could sustain
hunger like Socrates ; and when we had plenty, he
alone seemed to enjoy our military fare. He never

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 157

drank much willingly, but when he was compelled
he conquered all even in that to which he was least
accustomed ; and what is most astonishing, no
person ever saw Socrates drunk either then or at
any other time. In the depth of winter (and the
winters there are excessively rigid,) he sustained
calmly incredible hardships : and amongst other
things, whilst the frost was intolerably severe, and
no one went out of their tents, or if they went out,
wrapt themselves up carefully, and put fleeces under
their feet, and bound their legs with hairy skins,
Socrates went out only with the same cloak on that
he usually wore, and walked barefoot upon the ice ;
more easily, indeed, than those who had sandalled
themselves so delicately : so that the soldiers
thought that he did it to mock their want of
fortitude. It would indeed be worth while to
commemorate all that this brave man did and
endured in that expedition. In one instance he
was seen early in the morning, standing in one
place wrapt in meditation ; and as he seemed not
to be able to unravel the subject of his thoughts,
he still continued to stand as enquiring and discuss-
ing within himself, and when noon came, the
soldiers observed him, and said to one another —
' Socrates has been standing there thinking, ever
since the morning."' At last some lonians came

158 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

to the spot, and having supped, as it was summer,
bringing their blankets, they lay down to sleep in
the cool ; they observed that Socrates continued
to stand there the whole night until morning, and
that, when the sun rose, he saluted it with a
prayer and departed.

" I ought not to omit what Socrates is in battle.
For in that battle after which the generals decreed
to me the prize of courage, Socrates alone of all
men was the saviour of my life, standing by me
when I had fallen and was wounded, and preserving
both myself and my arms from the hands of the
enemy. On that occasion I entreated the generals
to decree the prize, as it was most due, to him.
And this, O Socrates, you cannot deny, that the
generals wishing to conciliate a person of my rank,
desired to give me the prize, you were far more
earnestly desirous than the generals that this glory
should be attributed not to yourself, but me.

" But to see Socrates when our army was defeated
and scattered in flight at Delius, was a spectacle
worthy to behold. On that occasion I was among
the cavalry, and he on foot, heavily armed. After
the total rout of our troops, he and Laches re-
treated together ; I came up by chance, and seeing
them, bade them be^of good cheer, for that I would
not leave them. As I was on horseback, and there-

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 159

fore less occupied by a regard of my own situation,
I could better observe than at Potidaea the beau-
tiful spectacle exhibited by Socrates on this emer-
gency. How superior was he to Laches in presence
of mind and courage ! Your representation of him
on the stage, O Aristophanes, was not wholly un-
like his real self on this occasion, for he walked
and darted his regards around with a majestic
composure, looking tranquilly both on his friends
and enemies; so that it was evident to every one,
even from afar, that whoever should venture to
attack him would encounter a desperate resistance.
He and his companion thus departed in safety ; for
those who are scattered in flight are pursued and
killed, whilst men hesitate to touch those who
exhibit such a countenance as that of Socrates even
in defeat.

" Many other and most wonderful qualities
might well be praised in Socrates ; but such as these
might singly be attributed to others. But that
which is unparalleled in Socrates, is, that he is
unlike, and above comparison, with all other men,
whether those who have lived in ancient times, or
those who exist now. For it may be conjectured,
that Brasidas and many others are such as was
Achilles. Pericles deserves comparison with Nestor
and Antenor; and other excellent persons of various

160 - THE BANQUET OF PLA.TO.

times may, with probability, be drawn into com-
parison with each other. But to such a singular
man as this, both himself and his discourses are so
uncommon, no one, should he seek, would find a
parallel among the present or the past generations
of mankind ; unless they should say that he resem-
bled those with whom I lately compared him, for,
assuredly, he and his discourses are like nothing
but the Silen and the Satyrs. At first I forgot to
make you observe how like his discourses are to
those Satyrs when they are opened, for, if any one
will listen to the talk of Socrates, it will appear to
him at first extremely ridiculous ; the phrases and
expressions which he employs, fold around his
exterior the skin, as it were, of a rude and wanton
Satyr. He is always talking about great market-
asses, and brass-founders, and leather-cutters, and
skin-dressers ; and this is his perpetual custom, so
that any dull and unobservant person might easily
laugh at his discourse. But if any one should see
it opened, as it were, and get within the sense of
his words, he would then find that they alone of
all that enters into the mind of man to utter, had a
profound and persuasive meaning, and that they
were most divine ; and that they presented to the
mind innumerable images of every excellence, and
that they tended towards objects of the highest

THE BANQUET OF PLATO, 161

moment, or rather towards all, that he who seeks
the possession of what is supremely beautiful and
good, need regard as essential to the accomplish-
ment of his ambition. . • ^

" These are the things, my friends, for which I

praise Socrates." V

*****

Alcibiades having said this, the whole party —r
burst into a laugh at WeT^frankness, jand Socrates v^*/'
said, " You seem to be sober enough, Alcibiades, jw>^ uriUcL
else you would not have made such a circuit of \ '^^^ '* ^
words, only to hide the main design for which \ » ^
jou made this long speech, and which, as it i ^^^^^j^ .
were carelessly, you just throw in at the last ; now, V,__^
as if you had not said all this for the mere purpose
of dividing me and Agathon \ You think that I ^
ought to be~y^tH?^-friend^,and -to-care-foF^o one/^ ^*^ ^^ ^

t{,.4> ■ else^ f^ I ^^^® found you out ; it is evident enough
^^ \for what design you invented all this Satyrical and
' V Silenic drama. But, my dear Agathon, do not let
V^ / his device succeed. I entreat you to permit no
one to throw discord between us." — " No doubt,''
said Agathon, " he sate down between us only that
he might divide us ; but this shall not assist ,lils^-r
scheme, for I will come and -eit/near you."*"* — " Do ^^Jf_52!5x
so," said Socrates, " come, there is room for y^^^ffd^jf I'UyxA
by me." — "Oh, Jupiter!" exclaimed Alcibiades,

i if

I4»yf

162 THE BANQUET OF PLATO.

" what I endure from that man ! He thinks to
subdue every way ; but, at least, I pray you, let
A gathon remain between us." — " Impossible," said
Socrates, " you have just praised me ; I ought to
praise him sitting at my right hand. If Agathon
'^ lfr^(^J is plaeed-beside you, will he not praise me before I
praise him ? Now, my dear friend, allow the young
man to receive what praise I can give him. I have
a great desire to pronounce his encomium." —
"Quick, quick, Alcibiades,'" said Agathon, " I can-
not stay here, I must change my place, or Socrates
will not praise me."— Agathon then arose to take

/'his place near Socrates.
He had no sooner reclined than there came in a
number of revellers — for some one who had gone
out had left the door open— and took their places
on the vacant couches, and everything became full
of confusion; and no order being observed, every
one was obliged to drink a great quantity of wine.
Eryximachus, and Phsedrus, and some others, said
Aristodemus, went home to bed; that, for his part,
he went to sleep on his couch, and slept long and
soundly^the nights were then long — until the cock
crew in the morning. When he awoke he found
that some were still fast asleep, and others had
gone home, and that Aristophanes, Agathon, and
Socrates had alone stood it out, and were still

THE BANQUET OF PLATO. 1 G3

drinking out of a great goblet which they passed
round and round. Socrates was disputing between
them. The beginning of their discussion Aristo-
demus said that he did not recollect, because he
was asleep ; but it was terminated by Socrates
forcing them to confess, that the same person is
able to compose both tragedy and comedy, and
that the foundations of the tragic and comic arts
were essentially the same. They, rather convicted
than convinced, went to sleep. Aristophanes first
awoke, and then, it being broad daylight, Agathon.
Socrates, having put them to sleep, went away,
Aristodemus following him, and coming to the
Lyceum he washed himself, as he would have done
anywhere else, and after having spent the day there
in his acccustomed manner, went home in the
evening.

ON LOVE.

What is love ? Ask him who lives, what is life ?
ask him who adores, what is God ?

I know not the internal constitution of other
men, nor even thine, whom I now address. I see
that in some external attributes they resemble me,
but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought
to appeal to something in common, and unburthen
ray inmost soul to them, I have found my language
misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage
land. The more opportunities they have afforded
me for experience, the wider has appeared the
interval between us, and to a greater distance have
the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a
spirit ill fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and
feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere
sought sympathy, and have found only repulse and
disappointment.

Thou demandest what is love? It is that
powerful attraction towards all that we conceive,

ON LOVE. 165

or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find
within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufii-
cient void, and seek to awaken in all things that
are, a community with what we experience within
ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood ;
if we imagine, we would that the airy children of
our brain were born anew within another'^s ; if we
feel, we would that another^s nerves should vibrate
to our own, that the beams of their eyes should
kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that
lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips
quivering and burning with the heart's best blood.
This is Love. This is the bond and the sanction
which connects not only man with man, but with
every thing which exists. We are born into the
world, and there is something within us which,
from the instant that we live, more and more
thirsts after its likeness. It is probably in corres-
pondence with this law that the infant drains milk
from the bosom of its mother ; this propensity
develops itself with the development of our nature.
We dimly see within our intellectual nature a
miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived
of all that we condemn or despise, the ideal pro-
totype of every thing excellent or lovely that we
are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature
of man. Not only the portrait of our external

166

ON LOVE.

being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles
of which our nature is composed ; * a mirror whose
surface reflects only the forms of purity and bright-
ness ; a soul within our soul that describes a circle
around its proper paradise, which pain, and sorrow,
and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly
refer all sensations, thirsting that they should
resemble or correspond with it. The discovery of
its antitype ; the meeting with an understanding
capable of clearly estimating our own ; an imagi-
nation which should enter into and seize upon the
subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have
delighted to cherish and unfold in secret ; with a
frame whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite
lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful
voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own ; and
of a combination of all these in such proportion as
the type within demands ; this is the invisible and
unattainable point to which Love tends ; and to
attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to
arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the
possession of which there is no rest nor respite to
the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude,
or in that deserted state when we are surrounded
by human beings, and yet they sympathise not

* These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are
so — No help !

ON LOVE. 167

with us, we love the flowers, the grass, and the
waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very
leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found
a secret correspondence with our heart. There is
eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in
the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds
beside them, which by their inconceivable relation
to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to
a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of
mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusi-
asm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved
singing to you alone. Sterne says that, if he were
in a desert, he would love some cypress. So soon
as this want or power is dead, man becomes the
living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives
is the mere husk of what once he was.

THE COLISEUM.

At the hour of noon, on the feast of the Passover,
an old man, accompanied by a girl, apparently his
daughter, entered the Coliseum at Rome. They
immediately passed through the Arena, and seek-
ing a solitary chasm among the arches of the
southern part of the ruin, selected a fallen column
for their seat, and clasping each other's hands, sate
as in silent contemplation of the scene. But the
eyes of the girl were fixed upon her father's lips,
and his countenance, sublime and sweet, but mo-
tionless as some Praxitelean image of the greatest
of poets, filled the silent air with smiles, not
reflected from external forms.

It was the great feast of the Resurrection, and
the whole native population of Rome, together
with all the foreigners who flock from all parts of
the earth to contemplate its celebration, were
assembled round the Vatican. The most awful
religion of the world went forth surrounded by

THE COLISEUM. 169

emblazonry of mortal greatness, and mankind had
assembled to wonder at and worship the creations
of their own power. No straggler was to be met
with in the streets and grassy lanes which led to
the Coliseum. The father and daughter had sought
this spot immediately on their arrival.

A figure, only visible at Rome in night or soli-
tude, and then only to be seen amid the desolated
temples of the Forum, or gliding among the weed-
grown galleries of the Coliseum, crossed their path.
His form, which, though emaciated, displayed the
elementary outlines of exquisite grace, was enve-
loped in an ancient chlamys, which half concealed
his face ; his snow-white feet were fitted with ivory
sandals, delicately sculptured in the likeness of two
female figures, whose wings met upon the heel, and
whose eager and half- divided lips seemed quiver-
ing to meet. It was a face, once seen, never
to be forgotten. The mouth and the moulding
of the chin resembled the eager and impassioned
tenderness of the statues of Antinous ; but in-
stead of the effeminate suUenness of the eye, and
the narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an
expression of profound and piercing thought ; the
brow was clear and open, and his eyes deep, like
two wells of crystalline water which reflect the
all-beholding heavens. Over all was spread a timid

VOL. I. I

170 THE COLISEUM.

expression of womanish tenderness and hesitation,
which contrasted, yet intermingled strangely, with
the abstracted and fearless character that predo-
minated in his form and gestures.

He avoided, in an extraordinary degree, all
communication with the Italians, whose language
he seemed scarcely to understand, but was occa-
sionally seen to converse with some accomplished
foreigner, whose gestures and appearance might
attract him amid his solemn haunts. He spoke
Latin, and especially Greek, with fluency, and with
a peculiar but sweet accent ; he had apparently
acquired a knowledge of the northern languages of
Europe. There was no circumstance connected
with him that gave the least intimation of his
country, his origin, or his occupation. His dress
was strange, but splendid and solemn. He was
forever alone. The literati of Rome thought him
a curiosity, but there was something in his manner
unintelligible but impressive, which awed their
obtrusions into distance and silence. The country-
men, whose path he rarely crossed, returning by
starlight from their market at Campo Vaccino,
called him, with that strange mixture of religious
and historical ideas so common in Italy, IlDiavolo
di Bruto,

Such was the figure which interrupted the con-

THE COLISEUM. 171

templatlons, If they were so engaged, of the
strangers, by addressing them in the clear, and
exact, but unidiomatic phrases of their native lan-
guage:— *' Strangers, you are two; behold the third
in this great city, to whom alone the spectacle of
these mighty ruins is more delightful than the
mockeries of a superstition which destroyed them."

" I see nothing," said the old man.

" What do you here, then f

" I listen to the sweet singing of the birds, and
the sound of my daughter's breathing composes me
like the soft murmur of water — and I feel the sun-
warm wind — and this is pleasant to me."

'* Wretched old man, know you not that these
are the ruins of the Coliseum V —

" Alas ! stranger," said the girl, in a voice like
mournful music, ** speak not so— he is blind." —

The stranger's eyes were suddenly filled with
tears, and the lines of his countenance became
relaxed. " Blind !" he exclaimed, in a tone of
suffering, which was more than an apology; and
seated himself apart on a flight of shattered and
mossy stairs which wound up among the labyrinths
of the ruin.

" My sweet Helen," said the old man, " you did
not tell me that this was the Coliseum."

** How should I tell you, dearest father, what I
i2

172 THE COLISEUM.

knew not ? I was on the point of inquiring the
way to that building, when we entered this circle
of ruins, and, until the stranger accosted us, I
remained silent, subdued by the greatness of what
I see."

"It is your custom, sweetest child, to describe
to me the objects that give you delight. You
array them in the soft radiance of your words,
and whilst you speak I only feel the infirmity
which holds me in such dear dependence, as a
blessing. Why have you been silent now V

" I know not — first the wonder and pleasure of
the sight, then the words of the stranger, and then
thinking on what he had said, and how he had
looked— and now, beloved father, your own words."

" Well, tell me now, what do you see V

*' I see a great circle of arches built upon arches,
and shattered stones lie around, that once made a
part of the solid wall. In the crevices, and on the
vaulted roofs, grow a multitude of shrubs, the wild
olive and the myrtle — and intricate brambles, and
entangled weeds and plants I never saw before.
The stones are immensely massive, and they jut
out one from the other. There are terrible rifts
in the wall, and broad windows through which you
see the blue heaven. There seems to be more than
a thousand arches, some ruined, some entircj and

THE COLISEUM.- 173

they are all immensely high and wide. Some are
shattered, and stand forth in great heaps, and the
underwood is tufted on their crumbling summits.
Around us lie enormous columns, shattered and
shapeless — and fragments of capitals and cornice,
fretted with delicate sculptures." —

** It is open to the blue sky V said the old man.

"Yes. We see the liquid depth of heaven
above through the rifts and the windows ; and the.
flowers, and the weeds, and the grass and creeping
moss, are nourished by its unforbidden rain. The-
blue sky is above — the wide, bright, blue sky — it
flows through the great rents on higli, and through
the bare boughs of the marble rooted fig-tree, and
through the leaves and flowers of the weeds, even
to the dark arcades beneath. I see — I feel its
clear and piercing beams fill the universe, and
impregnate the joy-inspiring wind with life and
light, and casting the veil of its splendour over all
things — even me. Yes, and through the highest
rift the noonday waning moon is hanging, as it
were, out of the solid sky, and this shows that the
atmosphere has all the clearness which it rejoices
me that you feel."

" What else see you V

" Nothing."

'^ Nothing f

174 THE COLISEUM.

'* Only the bright-green mossy ground, speckled
by tufts of dewy clover-grass that run into the
interstices of the shattered arches, and round the
isolated pinnacles of the ruin.""

" Like the lawny dells of soft short grass which
wind among the pine forests and precipices in the
Alps of Savoy V

" Indeed, father, your eye has a vision more
serene than mine."

" And the great wrecked arches, the shattered
masses of precipitous ruin, overgrown with the
younglings of the forest, and more like chasms
rent by an earthquake among the mountains,
than like the vestige of what was human work-
manship— what are they V

" Things awe-inspiring and wonderful.""

"Are they not caverns such as the untamed
elephant might choose, amid the Indian wilderness,
wherein to hide her cubs ; such as, were the sea to
overflow the earth, the mightiest monsters of the
deep would change into their spacious chambers V

" Father, your words image forth what I would
have expressed, but, alas ! could not."

" I hear the rustling of leaves, and the sound of
waters, — but it does not rain, — like the fast drops
of a fountain among woods."

" It falls from among the heaps of ruin over our

THE COLISEUM. 175

heads — it is, I suppose, the water collected in the
rifts by the showers."

"A nursling of man's art, abandoned by his
care, and transformed by the enchantment of
Nature into a likeness of her own creations, and
destined to partake their immortality ! Changed
into a mountain cloven with woody dells, which
overhang its labyrinthine glades, and shattered into
toppling precipices. Even the clouds, intercepted
by its craggy summit, feed its eternal fountains
with their rain. By the column on which I sit, I
should judge that it had once been crowned by a
temple or a theatre, and that on sacred days the
multitude wound up its craggy path to spectacle or

the sacrifice It was such itself !* Helen, what

sound of wings is that V

* Nor does a recollection of the use to which it may have been
destined interfere with these emotions. Time has thrown its purple
shadow athwart this scene, and no more is visible than the broad and
everlasting character of human strength and genius, that pledge of all
that is to be admirable and lovely in ages yet to come. Solemn tem-
ples, where the senate of the world assembled, palaces, triumphal arches,
and cloud-surrounded columns, loaded with the sculptured annals of
conquest and domination — what actions and deliberations have they
been destined to enclose and commemorate ? Superstitious rites, which
in their mildest form, outrage reason, and obscure the moral sense of
mankind ; schemes for wide-extended murder, and devastation, and mis-
rule, and servitude ; and, lastly, these schemes brought to their tremen-
dous consummations, and a human being returning in the midst of
festival and solemn joy, with thousands and thousands of his enslaved

176 THE COLISEUM.

" It is the wild pigeons returning to their young.
Do you not hear the murmur of those that are
brooding in their nests V

"Ay, it is the language of their happiness. They
are as happy as we are, child, but in a different
manner. They know not the sensations which
this ruin excites within us. Yet it is pleasure to
them to inhabit it ; and the succession of its forms
ajs they pass, is connected with associations in their
minds, sacred to them as these to us. The internal
nature of each being is surrounded by a circle, not
to be surmounted by his fellows ; and it is this
repulsion which constitutes the misfortune of the
condition of life. But there is a circle which com-
prehends, as well as one which mutually excludes,
all things which feel. And, with respect to man,
his pubhc and his private happiness consists in
diminishing the circumference which includes those
resembling himself, until they become one with
him, and he with them. It is because we enter
into the meditations, designs and destinies of some-
thing beyond ourselves, that the contemplation of

and desolated species chained behind his chariot, exhibiting, as titles
to renown, the labour of ages, and the admired creations of genius,
overthrovvn by the bruta] force, which was placed as a sword within hij
hand, and, — contemplation feaiful and abhorred! — he himself a being
capable of the gentlest and best emotions, inspired with the persuasion
that he has done a virtuous deed ! We do not forget these things. * *

THE COLISEUM. 177

the ruins of human power excites an elevating sense
of awfulness and beauty. It is therefore, that the
ocean, the glacier, the cataract, the tempest, the
volcano, have each a spirit which animates the
extremities of our frame with tingling joy. It is
therefore, that the singing of birds, and the motion
of leaves, the sensation of the odorous earth be-
neath, and the freshness of the living wind around,
is sweet. And this is Love. This is the religion
of eternity, whose votaries have been exiled from
among the multitude of mankind. O, Power !"
cried the old man, lifting his sightless eyes towards
the undazzHng sun, "thou which interpenetrat-
est all things, and without which this glorious
world were a blind and formless chaos. Love,-
Author of Good, God, King, Father ! Friend of
these thy worshippers ! Two solitary hearts invoke
thee, may they be divided never ! If the conten-
tions of mankind have been their misery ; if to
give and seek that happiness which thou art, has
been their choice and destiny ; if, in the contem-
plation of these majestic records of the power of
their kind, they see the shadow and the pro-
phecy of that which thou mayst have decreed that
he should become ; if the justice, the liberty, the
loveliness, the truth, which are thy footsteps, have
been sought by them, divide them not ! It is thine
I 3

178 THE COLISEUM.

to unite, to eternize ; to make outlive the limits
of the grave those who have left among the Hv-
ing, memorials of thee. When this frame shall
be senseless dust, may the hopes, and the desires,
and the delights which animate it now, never be
extinguished in my child; even as, if she were
borne into the tomb, my memory would be the
written monument of all her nameless excel-
lencies V

The old man'*s countenance and gestures, radiant
with the inspiration of his words, sunk, as he ceased,
into more than its accustomed calmness, for he
heard his daughter's sobs, and remembered that
he had spoken of death. — " My father, how can I
outlive you V said Helen.

" Do not let us talk of death," said the old man,
suddenly changing his tone. " Heraclitus, indeed,
died at my age, and if I had so sour a disposition,
there might be some danger. But Democritus
reached a hundred and twenty, by the mere dint
of a joyous and unconquerable mind. He only died
at last, because he had no gentle and beloved
ministering spirit, like my Helen, for whom it would
have been his delight to live. You remember his
gay old sister requested him to put off starving
himself to death until she had returned from the
festival of Ceres ; alleging, that it would spoil her

THE COLISEUM. 179

holiday if he refused to comply, as it was not
permitted to appear in the procession immediately
after the death of a relation ; and how good-tem-
peredly the sage acceded to her request."

The old man could not see his daughter's grateful
smile, but he felt the pressure of her hand by which
it was expressed. — " In truth," he continued, "that
mystery, death, is a change which neither for
ourselves nor for others is the just object of hope
or fear. We know not if it be good or evil, we
only know, it is. The old, the young, may alike die;
no time, no place, no age, no foresight, exempts us
from death, and the chance of death. We have
no knowledge, if death be a state of sensation, of
any precaution that can make those sensations
fortunate, if the existing series of events shall not
produce that effect. Think not of death, or think
of it as something common to us all. It has hap-
pened," said he, with a deep and suffering voice,
•' that men have buried their children."

" Alas ! then, dearest father, how I pity you.
Let us speak no more."

They arose to depart from the Coliseum, but the
figure which had first accosted them interposed
itself: — " Lady," he said, "if grief bean expiation
of error, I have grieved deeply for the words which
I spoke to your companion. The men who an-

180 t'he coliseum.

ciently inhabited this spot, and those from whom
they learned their wisdom, respected infirmity and
age. If I have rashly violated that venerable form,
at once majestic and defenceless, may I be forgiven T'

" It gives me pain to see how much your mistake
afflicts you," she said ; " if you can forget, doubt
not that we forgive."

"You thought me one of those who are blind in
spirit," said the old man, " and who deserve, if any
human being can deserve, contempt and blame.
Assuredly, contemplating this monument as I do,
though in the mirror of my daughter's mind, I am
filled with astonishment and delight ; the spirit of
departed generations seems to animate my limbs,
and circulate through all the fibres of my frame.
Stranger, if I have expressed what you have ever
felt, let us know each other more."

" The sound of your voice, and the harmony of
your thoughts, are delightful to me," said the
youth, " and it is a pleasure to see any form
which expresses so much beauty and goodness as
your daughter's ; if you reward me for my rude-
ness, by allowing me to know you, my error is
already expiated, and you remember my ill words
no more. I live a solitary life, and it is rare that
I encounter any stranger with whom it is pleasant
to talk ; besides, their meditations, even though

THE COLISEUM. 181

they be learned, do not always agree with mine ;
and, though I can pardon this difference, they
cannot. Nor have I ever explained the cause
of the dress I wear, and the difference which I
perceive between my language and manners, and
those with whom I have intercourse. Not but
that it is painful to me to live without communion
with intelligent and affectionate beings. You are
such, I feel.""

THE ASSASSINS.
a jFragment of a l^omance.

CHAPTER I.

Jerusalem, goaded on to resistance by the inces-
sant usurpations and insolence of Rome, leagued
together its discordant factions to rebel against
the common enemy and tyrant. Inferior to their
foe in all but the unconquerable hope of hberty,
they surrounded their city with fortifications of
uncommon strength, and placed in array before
the temple a band rendered desperate by patriotism
and religion. Even the women preferred to die,
rather than survive the ruin of their country.
When the Roman army approached the walls of
the sacred city, its preparations, its discipline, and
its numbers, evinced the conviction of its leader,
that he had no common barbarians to subdue. At
the approach of the Roman army, the strangers
withdrew from the city.

Among the multitudes which from every nation

THE ASSASSINS. 183

of the East had assembled at Jerusalem, was a little
congregation of Christians. They were remark-
able neither for their numbers nor their importance.
They contained among them neither philosophers
nor poets. Acknowledging no laws but those of
God, they modelled their conduct towards their
fellow-men by the conclusions of their individual
judgment on the practical application of these
laws. And it was apparent from the simplicity
and severity of their manners, that this contempt
for human institutions had produced among them
a character superior in singleness and sincere self-ap-
prehension to the slavery of pagan customs and the
gross delusions of antiquated superstition. Many
of their opinions considerably resembled those of
the sect afterwards known by the name of Gnostics.
They esteemed the human understanding to be the
paramount rule of human conduct; they maintained
that the obscurest religious truth required for its
complete elucidation no more than the strenuous
application of the energies of mind. It appeared
impossible to them that any doctrine could be
subversive of social happiness which is not capable
of being confuted by arguments derived from the
nature of existing things. With the devout est
submission to the law of Christ, they united an
intrepid spirit of inquiry as to the correctest mode

184( THE ASSASSINS.

of acting in particular instances of conduct that
occur among men. Assuming the doctrines of the
Messiah concerning benevolence and justice for
the regulation of their actions, they could not be
persuaded to acknowledge that there was apparent
in the divine code any prescribed rule whereby, for
its own sake, one action rather than another, as
fulfilling the will of their great Master, should be
preferred.

The contempt with which the magistracy and
priesthood regarded this obscure community of
speculators, had hitherto protected them from
persecution. But they had arrived at that precise
degree of eminence and prosperity which is pecu-
liarly obnoxious to the hostility of the rich and
powerful. The moment of their departure from
Jerusalem was the crisis of their future destiny.
Had they continued to seek a precarious refuge in
a city of the Roman empire, this persecution would
not have delayed to impress a new character on
their opinions and their conduct ; narrow views, .
and the illiberality of sectarian patriotism, would
not have failed speedily to obliterate the magnifi-
cence and beauty of their wild and wonderful
condition.

Attached from principle to peace, despising and
hating the pleasures and the customs of the rege-;

THE ASSASSINS. 185

nerate mass of mankind, this unostentatious commu-
nity of good and happy men fled to the soHtudes
of Lebanon. To Arabians and enthusiasts the
solemnity and grandeur of these desolate recesses
possessed peculiar attractions. It well accorded
with the justice of their conceptions on the relative
duties of man towards his fellow in society, that
they should labour in unconstrained equality to
dispossess the wolf and the tiger of their empire,
and establish on its ruins the dominion of intelli-
gence and virtue. No longer would the worshippers
of the God of Nature be indebted to a hundred,
hands for the accommodation of their simple wants.
No longer would the poison of a diseased civilization
embrue their very nutriment with pestilence. They
would no longer owe their very existence to the
vices, the fears, and the follies of mankind. Love,
friendship, and philanthropy, would now be the
characteristic disposers of their industry. It is for
his mistress or his friend that the labourer con-
secrates his toil ; others are mindful, but he is
forgetful, of himself. " God feeds the hungry
ravens, and clothes the lilies of the fields, and yet
Solomon in all his glory is not like to one of these."
Rome was now the shadow of her former self.
The light of her grandeur and loveliness had passed
away. The latest and the noblest of her poets and

186

THE ASSASSINS.

historians had foretold in agony her approaching
slavery and degradation. The ruins of the human
mind, more awful and portentous than the desola-
tion of the most solemn temples, threw a shade of
gloom upon her golden palaces which the brutal
vulgar could not see, but which the mighty felt
with inward trepidation and despair. The ruins
of Jerusalem lay defenceless and uninhabited upon
the burning sands ; none visited, but in the depth
of solemn awe, this accursed an dsolitary spot. Tra-
dition says that there was seen to linger among the
scorched and shattered fragments of the temple,
one being, whom he that saw dared not to call man,
with clasped hands, immoveable eyes, and a visage
horribly serene. Not on the will of the capricious
multitude, nor the constant fluctuations of the
many and the weak, depends the change of empires
and religions. These are the mere insensible
elements from which a subtler intelligence moulds
its enduring statuary. They that direct the changes
of this mortal scene breathe the decrees of their
dominion from a throne of darkness and of tempest.
The power of man is great.

After many days of wandering, the Assassins
pitched their tents in the valley of Bethzatanai.
For ages had this fertile valley lain concealed from
the adventurous search of man, among mountains

THE ASSASSINS. 187

of everlasting snow. The men of elder days had
inhabited this spot. Piles of monumental marble
and fragments of columns that in their integrity
almost seemed the work of some intelligence more
sportive and fantastic than the gross conceptions
of mortality, lay in heaps beside the lake, and were
visible beneath its transparent waves. The flower-
ing orange-tree, the balsam, and innumerable
odoriferous shrubs, grew wild in the desolated
portals. The fountain tanks had overflowed, and
amid the luxuriant vegetation of their margin, the
yellov*^ snake held its unmolested dwelling. Hither
came the tiger and the bear to contend for those
once domestic animals who had forgotten the secure
servitude of their ancestors. No sound, when the
famished beast of prey had retreated in despair
from the awful desolation of this place, at whose
completion he had assisted, but the shrill cry of
the stork, and the flapping of his heavy wings from
the capital of the solitary column, and the scream
of the hungry vulture bafiled of its only victim.
The lore of ancient wisdom was sculptured in
mystic characters on the rocks. The human spirit
and the human hand had been busy here to accom-
plish its profoundest miracles. It was a temple
dedicated to the god of knowledge and of truth.
The palaces of the Caliphs and the Caesars might

1$8 THE ASSASSINS.

easily surpass these ruins in magnitude and sump-
tuousness : but they were the design of tyrants
and the work of slaves. Piercing genius and
consummate prudence had planned and executed
Bethzatanai. There was deep and important
meaning in every lineament of its fantastic sculp-
ture. The unintelligible legend, once so beautiful
and perfect, so full of poetry and history, spoke,
even in destruction, volumes of mysterious import,
and obscure significance.

But in the season of its utmost prosperity and
magnificence, art might not aspire to vie with
nature in the valley of Bethzatanai. All that was
wonderful and lovely was collected in this deep
seclusion. The fluctuating elements seemed to
have been rendered everlastingly permanent in
forms of wonder and dehght. The mountains of
Lebanon had been divided to their base to form
this happy valley ; on every side their icy summits
darted their white pinnacles into the clear blue
sky, imaging, in their grotesque outline, minarets,
and ruined domes, and columns worn with time.
Far below, the silver clouds rolled their bright
volumes in many beautiful shapes, and fed the
eternal springs that, spanning the dark chasms like
a thousand radiant rainbows, leaped into the quiet
vale, then, lingering in many a dark glade among

THE ASSASSINS.

189

the groves of cypress and of palm, lost themselves
in the lake. The immensity of these precipitous
mountains, with their starry pyramids of snow,
excluded the sun, which overtopped not, even in
its meridian, their overhanging rocks. But a more
heavenly and serener light was reflected from their
icy mirrors, which, piercing through the many-
tinted clouds, produced lights and colours of inex-
haustible variety. The herbage was perpetually
verdant, and clothed the darkest recesses of the
caverns and the woods.

Nature, undisturbed, had become an enchantress
in these solitudes : she had collected here all that
was wonderful and divine from the armoury of her
omnipotence. The very winds breathed health and
renovation, and the joyousness of youthful courage.
Fountains of crystalline water played perpetually
among the aromatic flowers, and mingled a fresh-
ness with their odour. The pine boughs became
instruments of exquisite contrivance, among which
every varying breeze waked music of new and more
delightful melody. Meteoric shapes, more effulgent
than the moonlight, hung on the wandering clouds,
and mixed in discordant dance around the spiral
fountains. Blue vapours assumed strange lineaments
under the rocks and among the ruins, lingering like
ghosts with slow and solemn step. Through a dark

190

THE ASSASSINS.

chasm to the east, in the long perspective of a portal
glittering with the unnumbered riches of the sub-
terranean world, shone the broad moon, pouring
in one yellow and unbroken stream her horizontal
beams. Nearer the icy region, autumn and spring
held an alternate reign. The sere leaves fell and
choked the sluggish brooks ; the chilling fogs hung
diamonds on every spray ; and in the dark cold
evening the howling winds made melancholy music
in the trees. Far above, shone the bright throne
of winter, clear, cold, and dazzling. Sometimes
there was seen the snow-flakes to fall before the
sinking orb of the beamless sun, like a shower of
fiery sulphur. The cataracts, arrested in their
course, seemed, with their transparent columns, to
support the dark-browed rocks. Sometimes the
icy whirlwind scooped the powdery snow aloft, to
mingle with the hissing meteors, and scatter
spangles through the rare and rayless atmosphere.

Such strange scenes of chaotic confusion and
harrowing sublimity, surrounding and shutting in
the vale, added to the delights of its secure and
voluptuous tranquillity. No spectator could have
refused to believe that some spirit of great intelli-
gence and power had hallowed these wild and
beautiful solitudes to a deep and solemn mystery.

The immediate effect of such a scene, suddenly

THE ASSASSINS. 191

presented to the contemplation of mortal eyes, is
seldom the subject of authentic record. The coldest
slave of custom cannot fail to recollect some few
moments in which the breath of spring or the
crowding clouds of sunset, with the pale moon
shining through their fleecy skirts, or the song of
some lonely bird perched on the only tree of an
unfrequented heath, has awakened the touch of
nature. And they were Arabians who entered the
valley of Bethzatanai ; men who idolized nature
and the God of nature ; to whom love and lofty
thoughts, and the apprehensions of an uncorrupted
spirit, were sustenance and life. Thus securely
excluded from an abhorred world, all thought of
its judgment was cancelled by the rapidity of their
fervid imaginations. They ceased to acknowledge,
or deigned not to advert to, the distinctions with
which the majority of base and vulgar minds con-
troul the longings and struggles of the soul towards
its place of rest. A new and sacred fire was
kindled in their hearts and sparkled in their eyes.
Every gesture, every feature, the minutest action,
was modelled to beneficence and beauty by the
holy inspiration that had descended on their search-
ing spirits. The epidemic transport communicated
itself through every heart with the rapidity of a
blast from heaven. They were already disembodied

192

THE ASSAS:SINS."

spirits ; they were already the inhabitants of para-
dise. To hve, to breathe, to move, was itself a
sensation of immeasurable transport. Every new
contemplation of the condition of his nature brought
to the happy enthusiast an added measure of delight,
and impelled to every organ, where mind is united
with external things, a keener and more exquisite
perception of all that they contain of lovely and
divine. To love, to be beloved, suddenly became
an insatiable famine of his nature, which the wide
circle of the universe, comprehending beings of such
inexhaustible variety and stupendous magnitude of
excellence, appeared too narrow and confined to
satiate.

Alas, that these visitings of the spirit of life
should fluctuate and pass away ! That the moments
when the human mind is conmiensurate with all
that it can conceive of excellent and powerful, should
not endure with its existence and survive its most
momentous change ! But the beauty of a vernal
sunset, with its overhanging curtains of empurpled
cloud, is rapidly dissolved, to return at some unex-
pected period, and spread an alleviating melancholy
over the dark vigils of despair.

It is true the enthusiasm of overwhelming trans-
port which had inspired every breast among the
Assassins is no more. The necessity of daily occupa-

THE ASSASSINS. 193

tion and the ordinariness of that human life, the
burthen of which it is the destiny of every human
being to bear, had smothered, not extinguished,
that divine and eternal fire. Not the less indelible
and permanent were the impressions communicated
to all ; not the more unalterably were the features
of their social character modelled and determined
by its influence.

CHAPTER II.
Rome had fallen. Her senate-house had become
a polluted den of thieves and liars ; her solemn
temples, the arena of theological disputants, who
made fire and sword the missionaries of their in-
conceivable beliefs. The city of the monster
Constantino, symbolizing, in the consequences of
its foundation, the wickedness and weakness of his
successors, feebly imaged with declining power the
substantial eminence of the Roman name. Pilgrims
of a new and mightier faith crowded to visit the
lonely ruins of Jerusalem, and weep and pray
before the sepulchre of the Eternal God. The
earth was filled with discord, tumult, and ruin.
The spirit of disinterested virtue had armed one-
half of the civilised world against the other.
Monstrous and detestable creeds poisoned and

VOL. I. K

1.94 THE ASSASSINS.

blighted the domestic charities. There was no
appeal to natural love, or ancient faith, from pride,
superstition, and revenge.

Four centuries had passed thus terribly charac-
terized by the most calamitous revolutions. The
Assassins, meanwhile, undisturbed by the surround-
ing tumult, possessed and cultivated their fertile
valley. The gradual operation of their pecuhar
condition had matured and perfected the singu-
larity and excellence of their character. That
cause, which had ceased to act as an immediate and
overpowering excitement, became the unperceived
law of their lives, and sustenance of their natures.
Their religious tenets had also undergone a change,
corresponding with the exalted condition of their
moral being. The gratitude which they owed to the
benignant Spirit by which their limited intelligences
had not only been created but redeemed, was less fre-
quently adverted to, became less the topic of comment
or contemplation ; not, therefore, did it cease to be
their presiding guardian, the guide of their inmost
thoughts, the tribunal of appeal for the minutest
particulars of their conduct. They learned to
identify this mysterious benefactor with the delight
that is bred among the solitary rocks, and has its
dwelling alike in the changing colours of the clouds
and the inmost recesses of the caverns. Their future

THE ASSASSINS. 195

also no longer existed, but in the blissful tranquillity
of the present. Time was measured and created
by the vices and the miseries of men, between whom
and the happy nation of the Assassins, there was
no analogy nor comparison. Already had their
eternal peace commenced. The darkness had
passed away from the open gates of death.

The practical results produced by their faith and
condition upon their external conduct were singular
and memorable. Excluded from the great and
various community of mankind, these solitudes
became to them a sacred hermitage. In which all
formed, as it were, one being, divided against itself
by no contending will or factious passions. Every
impulse conspired to one end, and tended to a
single object. Each devoted his powers to the
happiness of the other. Their republic was the
scene of the perpetual contentions of benevolence ;
not the heartless and assumed kindness of commer-
cial man, but the genuine virtue that has a legible
superscription in every feature of the countenance,
and every motion of the frame. The perverseness
and calamities of those who dwelt beyond the
mountains that encircled their undisturbed posses-
sions, were unknown and unimagined. Little em-
barrassed by the complexities of civilized society,
they knew not to conceive any happiness that
k2

196 THE ASSASSINS.

can be satiated without participation, or that
thirsts not to reproduce and perpetually generate
itself. The path of virtue and felicity was plain
and unimpeded. They clearly acknowledged, in
every case, that conduct to be entitled to pre-
ference which would obviously produce the greatest
pleasure. They could not conceive an instance
in which it would be their duty to hesitate, in
causing, at whatever expense, the greatest and
most unmixed delight.

Hence arose a peculiarity which only failed
to germinate in uncommon and momentous conse-
quences, because the Assassins had retired from
the intercourse of mankind, over whom other
motives and principles of conduct than justice and
benevolence prevail. It would be a difficult matter
for men of such a sincere and simple farth^ to
estimate the final results of their intentions, among
the corrupt and slavish multitude. They would be
perplexed also in their choice of the means, whereby
their intentions might be fulfilled. To produce
immediate pain or disorder for the sake of future
benefit, is consonant, indeed, with the purest
religion and philosophy, but never fails to excite
invincible repugnance in the feelings of the many.
Against their predilections and distastes an Assas-
sin, accidentally the inhabitant of a civilized com-

THE ASSASSINS. 197

raunity, would wage unremitting hostility from
principle. He would find himself compelled to
adopt means which they would abhor, for the sake
of an object which they could not conceive that he
should propose to himself. Secure and self-enshrined
in the magnificence and pre-eminence of his con-
ceptions, spotless as the light of heaven, he would
be the victim among men of calumny and persecu-
tion. Incapable of distinguishing his motives, they
would rank him among the vilest and most atrocious
criminals. Great, beyond all comparison with
them, they would despise him in the presumption
of their ignorance. Because his spirit burned with
an unquenchable passion for their welfare, they
would lead him, like his illustrious master, amidst
scoffs, and mockery, and insult, to the remunera-
tion of an ignominious death.

Who hesitates to destroy a venomous serpent
that has crept near his sleeping friend, except the
man who selfislily dreads lest the malignant reptile
should turn its fury on himself? And if the
poisoner has assumed a human shape, if the bane
be distinguished only from the viper's venom by
the excess and extent of its devastation, will the
saviour and avenger here retract and pause,
entrenched behind the superstition of the indefea-
sible divinity of man I Is the human form, then,

198 THE ASSASSINS.

the mere badge of a prerogative for unlicensed
wickedness and mischief? Can the power derived
from the weakness of the oppressed, or the igno-
rance of the deceived, confer the right in security
to tyrannise and defraud ?

The subject of regular governments, and the
disciple of established superstition, dares not to
ask this question. For the sake of the eventual
benefit, he endures what he esteems a transitory
evil, and the moral degradation of man disquiets
not his patience. But the religion of an Assassin
imposes other virtues than endurance, when his
fellow-men groan under tyranny, or have become
so bestial and abject that they cannot feel their
chains. An Assassin believes that man is emi-
nently man, and only then enjoys the prerogatives
of his privileged condition, when his affections and
his judgment pay tribute to the God of Nature.
The perverse, and vile, and vicious — what were
they ? Shapes of some unholy vision, moulded by
the spirit of Evil, which the sword of the merciful
destroyer should sweep from this beautiful world.
Dreamy nothings ; phantasms of misery and mis-
chief, that hold their death-like state on glittering
thrones, and in the loathsome dens of poverty. No
Assassin would submissively temporize with vice,
and in cold charity become a pander to falsehood

THE ASSASSINS. 199

and desolation. His path through the wilderness
of civilized society would be marked with the blood
of the oppressor and the miner. The wretch,
whom nations tremblingly adore, would expiate in
his throttling grasp a thousand licensed and vener-
able crimes.

How many holy liars and parasites, in solemn
guise, would his saviour arm drag from their luxu-
rious couches, and plunge in the cold charnel, that
the green and many-legged monsters of the slimy
grave might eat off at their leisure the lineaments
of rooted malignity and detested cunning. The
respectable man — the smooth, smiling, polished
villain, whom all the city honours ; whose very
trade is lies and murder ; who buys his daily bread
with the blood and tears of men, would feed the
ravens with his limbs. The Assassin would cater
nobly for the eyeless worms of earth, 'and the
carrion fowls of heaven.

Yet here, religion and human love had imbued
the manners of those solitary people with inexpres-
sible gentleness and benignity. Courage and active
virtue, and the indignation against vice, which
becomes a hurrying and irresistible passion, slept
like the imprisoned earthquake, or the lightning
shafts that hang in the golden clouds of evening.
They were innocent, but they were capable of

200 THE ASSASSINS.

more than innocence ; for the great principles of
their faith were perpetually acknowledged and
adverted to ; nor had they forgotten, in this unin-
terrupted quiet, the author of their felicity.

Four centuries had thus worn away without
producing an event. Men had died, and natural
tears had been shed upon their graves, in sorrow
that improves the heart. Those who had been
united by love had gone to death together, leaving
to their friends the bequest of a most sacred grief,
and of a sadness that is allied to pleasure. Babes
that hung upon their mothers' breasts had become
men ; men had died ; and many a wild luxuriant
weed that overtopped the habitations of the vale,
had twined its roots around their disregarded
bones. Their tranquil state was like a summer
sea, whose gentle undulations disturb not the
reflected stars, and break not the long still line of
the rainbow hues of sunrise.

CHAPTER III.

Where all is thus calm, the slightest circum-
stance is recorded and remembered. Before the
sixth century had expired one incident occurred,
remarkable and strange. A young man, named
Albedir, wandering in the woods, was startled by

THE ASSASSINS. 201

the screaming of a bird of prey, and, looking up,
saw blood fall, drop by drop, from among the inter-
twined boughs of a cedar. Having climbed the
tree, he beheld a terrible and dismaying spectacle.
A naked human body was impaled on the broken
branch. It was maimed and mangled horribly;
every limb bent and bruised into frightful distor-
tion, and exhibiting a breathing image of the most
sickening mockery of life. A monstrous snake
had scented its prey from among the mountains —
and above hovered a hungry vulture. From amidst
this mass of desolated humanity, two eyes, black and
inexpressibly brilliant, shone with an unearthly
lustre. Beneath the blood-stained eye-brows their
steady rays manifested the serenity of an immortal
power, the collected energy of a deathless mind,
spell-secured from dissolution. A bitter smile of
mingled abhorrence and scorn distorted his wounded
lip —he appeared calmly to observe and measure all
around — self-possession had not deserted the shat-
tered mass of life.

The youth approached the bough on which the
breathing corpse was hung. As he approached,
the serpent reluctantly unwreathed his glittering
coils, and crept towards his dark and loathsome
cave. The vulture, impatient of his meal, fled to
the mountain, that re-echoed with his hoarse
k3

202 THE ASSASSINS.

screams. The cedar branches creaked with their
agitating weight, faintly, as the dismal wind arose.
All else was deadly silent.

At length a voice issued from the mangled man.
It rattled in hoarse murmurs from his throat and
lungs — his words were the conclusion of some
strange mysterious soliloquy. They were broken,
and without apparent connection, completing wide
intervals of inexpressible conceptions.

" The great tyrant is baffled, even in success.
Joy ! joy ! to his tortured foe ! Triumph to the
worm whom he tramples under his feet ! Ha !
His suicidal hand might dare as well abolish the
mighty frame of things I Delight and exultation
sit before the closed gates of death I — I fear not to
dwell beneath their black and ghastly shadow.
Here thy power may not avail ! Thou createst —
'tis mine to ruin and destroy. — I was thy slave —
I am thy equal, and thy foe. — Thousands trem-
ble before thy throne, who, at my voice, shall dare
to pluck the golden crown from thine unholy head!"''
He ceased. The silence of noon swallowed up his
words. Albedir clung tighter to the tree — he
dared not for dismay remove his eyes. He re-
mained mute in the perturbation of deep and
creeping horror.

" Albedir !" said the same voice, " Albedir ! in

THE ASSASSINS.

203

the name of God, approach. He that suffered me
to fall, watches thee ; — the gentle and merciful
spirits of sweet human love, delight not in agony
and horror. For pity's sake approach, in the
name of thy good God, approach, Albedir ! "
The tones were mild and clear as the responses of
JEolian music. They floated to Albedir's ear like
the warm breath of June that lingers in the lawny
groves, subduing all to softness. Tears of tender
affection started into his eyes. It was as the voice
of a beloved friend. The partner of his childhood,
the brother of his soul, seemed to call for aid, and
pathetically to remonstrate with delay. He resisted
not the magic impulse, but advanced towards the
spot, and tenderly attempted to remove the
wounded man. He cautiously descended the tree
with his wretched burthen, and deposited it on the
ground.

A period of strange silence intervened. Awe
and cold horror were slowly succeeding to the
softer sensations of tumultuous pity, when again he
heard the silver modulations of the same enchanting
voice. " Weep not for me, Albedir ! What
wretch so utterly lost, but might inhale peace and
renovation from this paradise ! I am wounded,
and in pain ; but having found a refuge in this seclu-
sion, and a friend in you, I am worthier of envy

204 THE ASSASSINS.

than compassion. Bear me to your cottage secretly:
I would not disturb your gentle partner by my
appearance. She must love me more dearly than
a brother. I must be the playmate of your chil-
dren; already I regard them with a father's love.
My arrival must not be regarded as a thing of
mystery and wonder. What, indeed, but that
men are prone to error and exaggeration, is less
inexplicable, than that a stranger, wandering on
Lebanon, fell from the rocks into the vale? Albedir,"
he continued, and his deepening voice assumed
awful solemnity, " in return for the affection with
which I cherish thee and thine, thou owest this
submission."

Albedir implicitly submitted; not even a thought
had power to refuse its deference. He reassumed
his burthen, and proceeded towards the cottage.
He watched until Khaled should be absent, and
conveyed the stranger into an apartment appropri-
ated for the reception of those who occasionally
visited their habitation. He desired that the door
should be securely fastened, and that he might not
be visited until the morning of the following day.

Albedir waited with impatience for the return of
Khaled. The unaccustomed weight of even so
transitory a secret, hung on his ingenuous and un-
practised nature, like a blighting, clinging curse.

THE ASSASSINS. 205

The stranger's accents had lulled him to a trance
of wild and delightful imagination. Hopes, so
visionary and aerial, that they had assumed no
denomination, had spread themselves over his
intellectual frame, and, phantoms as they were, had
modelled his being to their shape. Still his mind
was not exempt from the visitings of disquietude
and perturbation. It was a troubled stream of
thought, over whose fluctuating waves unsearchable
fate seemed to preside, guiding its unforeseen
alternations with an inexorable hand. Albedir
paced earnestly the garden of his cottage, revolving
every circumstance attendant on the incident of
the day. He re-imaged with intense thought the
minutest recollections of the scene. In vain — he
was the slave of suggestions not to be controlled.
Astonishment, horror, and awe — tumultuous sym-
pathy, and a mysterious elevation of soul, hurried
away all activity of judgment, and overwhelmed,
with stunning force, every attempt at deliberation
or inquiry.

His reveries were interrupted at length by the
return of Khaled. She entered the cottage, that
scene of undisturbed repose, in the confidence that
change might as soon overwhelm the eternal
world, as disturb this inviolable sanctuary. She
started to behold Albedir. Without preface or

206 THE ASSASSINS.

remark, he recounted with eager haste the occur-
rences of the day. Khaled's tranquil spirit could
hardly keep pace with the breathless rapidity of his
narration. She was bewildered with staggering
wonder even to hear his confused tones, and behold
his agitated countenance.

CHAPTER IV.

On the following morning Albedir arose at sun-
rise, and visited the stranger. He found him
already risen, and employed in adorning the lattice
of his chamber with flowers from the garden.
There was something in his attitude and occupa-
tion singularly expressive of his entire familiarity
with the scene. Albedir's habitation seemed to
have been his accustomed home. He addressed
his host in a tone of gay and affectionate welcome,
such as never fails to communicate by sympathy
the feelings from which it flows.

" My friend," said he, *' the balm of the dew of
our vale is sweet ; or is this garden the favoured
spot where the winds conspire to scatter the best
odours they can find ? Come, lend me your arm
awhile, I feel very weak." He motioned to walk
forth, but, as if unable to proceed, rested on the

THE ASSASSINS. 20 7

seat beside the door. For a few moments they
were silent, if the interchange of cheerful and
happy looks is to be called silence. At last he
observed a spade that rested against the wall.
" You have only one spade, brother," said he ;
*' you have only one, I suppose, of any of the
instruments of tillage. Your garden ground, too,
occupies a certain space which it will be necessary
to enlarge. This must be quickly remedied. I
cannot earn my supper of to-night, nor of to-
morrow ; but thenceforward, I do not mean to eat
the bread of idleness. I know that you would
willingly perform the additional labour which my
nourishment would require ; I know, also, that you
would feel a degree of pleasure in the fatigue arising
from this employment, but I shall contest with you
such pleasures as these, and such pleasures as
these alone.''** His eyes were somewhat wan, and
the tone of his voice languid as he spoke.

As they were thus engaged, Khaled came towards
them. The stranger beckoned to her to sit beside
him, and taking her hands within his own, looked
attentively on her mild countenance. Khaled in-
quired if he had been refreshed by sleep. He replied
by a laugh of careless and inoffensive glee ; and
placing one of her hands within Albedir's, said, " If
this be sleep, here in this odorous vale, where these

208 THE ASSASSINS.

sweet smiles encompass us, and the voices of those
who love are heard — if these be the visions of sleep,
sister, those who lie down in misery shall arise
lighter than the butterflies. I came from amid
the tumult of a world, how different from this ! I
am unexpectedly among you, in the midst of a
scene such as my imagination never dared to
promise. I must remain here— I must not depart.""
Khaled, recovering from the admiration and aston-
ishment caused by the stranger's words and man-
ner, assured him of the happiness which she should
feel in such an addition to her society. Albedir,
too, who had been more deeply impressed than
Khaled by the event of his arrival, earnestly re-
assured him of the ardour of the affection with
which he had inspired them. The stranger smiled
gently to hear the unaccustomed fervour of sincerity
which animated their address, and was rising to
retire, when Khaled said, " You have not yet seen
our children, Maimuna and Abdallah. They are
by the water-side, playing with their favourite
snake. We have only to cross yonder Uttle wood,
and wind down a path cut in the rock that over-
hangs the lake, and we shall find them beside a
recess which the shore makes there, and which a
chasm, as it were, among the rocks and woods,
encloses. Do you think you could walk there f

THE ASSASSINS. 209

" To see your children, Khaled ? I think I could,
with the assistance of Albedir's arm, and yours." —
So they went through the wood of ancient cypress,
intermingled with the brightness of many-tinted
blooms, which gleamed like stars through its
romantic glens. They crossed the green meadow,
and entered among the broken chasms, beautiful
as they were in their investiture of odoriferous
shrubs. They came at last, after pursuing a path
which wound through the intricacies of a little
wilderness, to the borders of the lake. They stood
on the rock which overhung it, from which there
was a prospect of all the miracles of nature and of
art which encircled and adorned its shores. The
stranger gazed upon it with a countenance un-
changed by any emotion, but, as it were, thought-
fully and contemplatingly. As he gazed, Khaled
ardently pressed his hand, and said, in a low
yet eager voice, " Look, look, lo there !" He
turned towards her, but her eyes were not on him.
She looked below — her lips were parted by the
feelings which possessed her soul — her .breath came
and went regularly but inaudibly. She leaned over
the precipice, and her dark hair hanging beside her
face, gave relief to its fine lineaments, animated by
such love as exceeds utterance. The stranger
followed her eyes, and saw that her children were

210 THE ASSASSINS.

in the glen below; then raising his eyes, exchanged
with her affectionate looks of congratulation and
delight. The boy was apparently eight years old,
the girl about two years younger. The beauty of
their form and countenance was something so
divine and strange, as overwhelmed the senses of
the beholder like a delightful dream, with insup-
portable ravishment. They were arrayed in a
loose robe of linen, through which the exquisite
proportions of their form appeared. Unconscious
that they were observed, they did not relinquish
the occupation in which they were engaged. They
had constructed a little boat of the bark of trees,
and had given it sails of interwoven feathers, and
launched it on the water. They sate beside a white
flat stone, on which a small snake lay coiled, and
when their work was finished, they arose and called
to the snake in melodious tones, so that it under-
stood their language. For it un wreathed its shining
circles and crept to the boat, into which no sooner
had it entered than the girl loosened the band
which held it to the shore, and it sailed away.
Then they ran round and round the little creek,
clapping their hands, and melodiously pouring out
wild sounds, which the snake seemed to answer
by the restless glancing of his neck. At last a
breath of wind came from the shore, and the boat

THE ASSASSINS. 211

changed Its course, and was about to leave the
creek, which the snake perceived and leaped into
the water, and came to the Httle children's feet.
The girl sang to it, and it leaped into her bosom,
and she crossed her fair hands over it, as if to
cherish it there. Then the boy answered with a
song, and it glided from beneath her hands and
crept towards him. While they were thus em-
ployed, Maimuna looked up, and seeing her parents
on the cliff, ran to meet them up the steep path
that wound around it ; and Abdallah, leaving his
snake, followed joyfully.

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.

a jFragment.

The first law which it becomes a Reformer to
propose and support, at the approach of a period
of great political change, is the abolition of the
punishment of death.

It is sufficiently clear that revenge, retaliation,
atonement, expiation, are rules and motives, so far
from deserving a place in any enlightened system
of political life, that they are the chief sources of
a prodigious class of miseries in the domestic circles
of society. It is clear that however the spirit of
legislation may appear to frame institutions upon
more philosophical maxims, it has hitherto, in those
cases which are termed criminal, done little more
than palliate the spirit, by gratifying a portion of
it ; and afforded a compromise between that which is
best ; — the inflicting of no evil upon a sensitive

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 213

being, without a decisively beneficial re&ult in which
he should at least participate ; — and that which is
worst ; that he should be put to torture for the
amusement of those whom he may have injured, or
may seem to have injured.

Omitting these remoter considerations, let us
inquire what Death is ; that which is applied as a
measure of transgressions of indefinite shades of
distinction, so soon as they shall have passed that
degree and colour of enormity, with which it is
supposed no inferior infliction is commensurate.

And first, whether death is good or evil, a
punishment or a reward, or whether it be wholly in-
different, no man can take upon himself to assert.
That that within us which thinks and feels, con-
tinues to think and feel after the dissolution of the
body, has been the almost universal opinion of man-
kind, and the accurate philosophy of what I may
be permitted to term the modern Academy, by
showing the prodigious depth and extent of our
ignorance respecting the causes and nature of sen-
sation, renders probable the affirmative of a propo-
sition, the negative of which it is so difficult to con-
ceive, and the popular arguments against which,
derived from what is called the atomic system, are
proved to be applicable only to the relation which
one object bears to another, as apprehended by the

214 ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH,

mind, and not to existence itself, or the natnre of
that essence which is the medium and receptacle
of objects.

The popular system of religion suggests the idea
that the mind, after death, will be painfully or
pleasurably affected according to its determinations
during life. However ridiculous and pernicious we
must admit the vulgar accessories of this creed to be,
there is a certain analogy, not wholly absurd, between
the consequences resulting to an individual during
life from the virtuous or vicious, prudent or impru-
dent, conduct of his external actions, to those con-
sequences which are conjectured to ensue from the
discipline and order of his internal thoughts, as
affecting his condition in a future state. They
omit, indeed, to calculate upon the accidents of
disease, and temperament, and organisation, and
circumstance, together with the multitude of in-
dependent agencies which affect the opinions, the
conduct, and the happiness of individuals, and pro-
duce determinations of the will, and modify the
judgment, so as to produce effects the most opposite
in natures considerably similar. These are those
operations in the order of the whole of nature,
tending, we are prone to believe, to some definite
mighty end, to which the agencies of our peculiar
nature are subordinate; nor is there any reason

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 215

to suppose, that in a future state they should be-
come suddenly exempt from that subordination.
The philosopher is unable to determine whether our
existence in a previous state has affected our pre-
sent condition, and abstains from deciding whether
our present condition would affect us in that which
may be future. That, if we continue to exist, the
manner of our existence will be such as no infer-
ences nor conjectures, afforded by a consideration
of our earthly experience, can elucidate, is suffi-
ciently obvious. The opinion that the vital principle
within us, in whatever mode it may continue to
exist, must lose that consciousness of definite and
individual being which now characterises it, and
become a unit in the vast sum of action and of
thought which disposes and animates the universe,
and is called God, seems to belong to that class of
opinion which has been designated as indifferent.

To compel a person to know all that can be
known by the dead, concerning that which the
living fear, hope, or forget ; to plunge him into
the pleasure or pain which there awaits him ; to
punish or reward him in a manner and in a degree
incalculable and incomprehensible by us; to disrobe
him at once from all that intertexture of good and
evil with which Nature seems to have clothed every
form of individual existence, is to inflict on him the
doom of death.

216 ON THE PUNISHMENT OP DEATH.

A certain degree of pain and terror usually
accompany the infliction of death. This degree is
infinitely varied by the infinite variety in the tem-
perament and opinions of the sufferers. As a mea-
sure of punishment, strictly so considered, and as an
exhibition, which, by its known effects on the sensi-
bility of the sufferer, is intended to intimidate the
spectators from incurring a similar liability, it is
singularly inadequate.

Firstly, — Persons of energetic character, in
whom, as in men who suffer for political crimes,
there is a large mixture of enterprise, and fortitude,
and disinterestedness, and the elements, though
misguided and disarranged, by which the strength
and happiness of a nation might have been cement-
ed, die in such a manner, as to make death appear
not evil, but good. The death of what is called a
traitor, that is, a person who, from whatever motive,
would abolish the government of the day, is as often
a triumphant exhibition of suffering virtue, as the
warning of a culprit. The multitude, instead of
departing with a panic-stricken approbation of the
laws which exhibited such a spectacle, are inspired
with pity, admiration and sympathy; and the
most generous among them feel an emulation to be
the authors of such flattering emotions, as they expe-
rience stirring in their bosoms. Impressed by what

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 217

they seo and feel, they make no distinction between
the motives which incited the criminals to the actions
for which they suffer, or the heroic courage with
which they turned into good that which their
judges awarded to them as evil, or the purpose
itself df those actions, though that purpose may
happen to be eminently pernicious. The laws in
this case lose that sympathy, which it ought to be
their chief object to secure, and in a participation
of which, consists their chief strength in maintain-
ing those sanctions by which the parts of the social
union are bound together, so ^s to produce, as
nearly as possible, the ends for which it is insti-
tuted.

Secondly — persons of energetic character, in
communities not modelled with philosophical skill
to turn all the energies which they contain to the
purposes of common good, are prone also to fall
into the temptation of undertaking, and are pecu-
liarly fitted for despising the perils attendant upon
consummating, the most enormous crimes. Mur-
der, rapes, extensive schemes of plunder, are the
actions of persons belonging to this class ; and
death is the penalty of conviction. But the coarse-
ness of organisation, peculiar to men capable of
committing acts wholly selfish, is usually found to
be associated with a proportionate insensibility to

VOL. I. L

218 ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.

fear or pain. Their sufferings communicate to
those of the spectators, who may be liable to the
commission of similar crimes, a sense of the light-
ness of that event, when closely examined, which,
at a distance, as uneducated persons are accustomed
to do, probably they regarded with horror. But
a great majority of the spectators are so bound
up in the interests and the habits of social union
that no temptation would be sufficiently strong to
induce them to a commission of the enormities to
which this penalty is assigned. The more powerful,
the richer among them, — and a numerous class
of little tradesmen are richer and more powerful
than those who are employed by them, and the
employer, in general, bears this relation to the
employed, — regard their own wrongs as, in some
degree, avenged, and their own rights secured by
this punishment, inflicted as the penalty of what-
ever crime. In cases of murder or mutilation, this
feeling is almost universal. In those, therefore,
whom this exhibition does not awaken to the
sympathy which extenuates crime and discredits
the law which restrains it, it produces feelings
more directly at war with the genuine purposes of
political society. It excites those emotions which
it is the chief object of civilisation to extinguish
for ever, and in the extinction of which alone there

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEA.TH. 219

can be any hope of better institutions than those
under which men now misgovern one another. Men
feel that their revenge is gratified, and that their
security is estabHshed by the extinction and the
sufferings of beings, in most respects resembhng
themselves ; and their daily occupations constrain-
ing them to a precise form in all their thoughts,
they come to connect inseparably the idea of their
own advantage with that of the death and torture
of others. It is manifest thattheobject of sane polity
is directly the reverse ; and that laws founded upon
reason, should accustom the gross vulgar to asso-
ciate their ideas of security and of interest with
the reformation, and the strict restraint, for that
purpose alone, of those who might invade it.

The passion of revenge is originally nothing more
than an habitual perception of the ideas of the
sufferings of the person who inflicts an injury,
as connected, as they are in a savage state, or
in such portions of society as are yet undisciplined
to civilisation, with security that that injury
will not be repeated in future. This feeling,
engrafted upon superstition and confirmed by
habit, at last loses sight of the only object
for which it may be supposed to have been
implanted, and becomes a passion and a duty to
be pursued and fulfilled, even to the destruction of
l2

220 ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.

those ends to which it originally tended. The
other passions, both good and evil, Avarice, Re-
morse, Love, Patriotism, present a similar appear-
ance ; and to this principle of the mind over-shoot-
ing the mark at which it aims, we owe all that is
eminently base or excellent in human nature ; in
providing for the nutriment or the extinction of
which consists the true art of the legislator.*

Nothing is more clear than that the infliction of
punishment in general, in a degree which the refor-
mation and the restraint of those who transgress the
laws does not render indispensable, and none more
than death, confirms all the inhuman and unsocial
impulses of men. It is almost a proverbial remark,

* The savage and the illiterate are but faintly aware of the distinc-
tion between the future and the past ; they mal<e actions belonging to
periods so distinct, the subjects of similar feelings ; they live only in
the present, or in the past as it is present. It is in this that the philo-
sopher excels one of the many ; it is this which distinguishes the doc-
trine of philosophic necessity from fatalism ; and that determination of
the will, by which it is the active source of future events, from that
liberty or indifference, to which the abstract liability of irremediable
actions is attached, according to the notions of the vulgar.

This is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse and Revenge ;
the one extending itself over the future, and the other over the past ;
provinces in which their suggestions can only be the sources of evil. The
purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously in future, and
the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing an enemy, are the
sources from which the enormous superstitions implied in the words
cited have arisen.

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH. 221

that those nations in which the penal code has
been particularly mild, have been distinguished
from all others by the rarity of crime. But the
example is to be admitted to be equivocal. A more
decisive argument is afforded by a consideration of
the universal connexion of ferocity of manners,
and a contempt of social ties, with the contempt of
human life. Governments which derive their in-
stitutions from the existence of circumstances of
barbarism and violence, with some rare exceptions
perhaps, are bloody in proportion as they are des-
potic, and form the manners of their subjects to a
sympathy with their own spirit.

The spectators who feel no abhorrence at a
public execution, but rather a self-applauding
superiority, and a sense of gratified indignation, are
surely excited to the most inauspicious emotions.
The first reflection of such a one is the sense of his
own internal and actual worth, as preferable to that
of the victim, whom circumstances have led to des-
truction. The meanest wretch is impressed with
a sense of his own comparative merit. He is one
of those on whom the tower of Siloam fell not —
he is such a one as Jesus Christ found not in all
Samaria, who, in his own soul, throws the first stone
at the woman taken in adultery. The popular
religion of the country takes its designation from

222 ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.

that illustrious person whose beautiful sentiment I
have quoted. Any one who has stript from the
doctrines of this person the veil of familiarity, will
perceive how adverse their spirit is to feelings of
this nature.

ON LIFE.

Life and the world, or whatever we call that
which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing.
The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder
of our being. We are struck with admiration at
some of its transient modifications, but it is itself
the great miracle. What are changes of empires,
the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which
supported them ; what is the birth and the extinc-
tion of religious and of political systems, to life ?
What are the revolutions of the globe which we
inhabit, and the operations of the elements of
which it is composed, compared with life I What
is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this
inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and
their destiny, compared with life ? Life, the great
miracle, we admire not, because it is so mira-
culous. It is well that we are thus shielded by
the familiarity of what is at once so certain and
so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would

224

ON LIFE.

otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that
which is its object.

If any artist, I do not say had executed, but
had merely conceived in his mind the system of the
sun, and the stars, and planets, they not existing,
and had painted to us in words, or upon canvas
the spectacle now afforded by the nightly cope of
heaven, and illustrated it by the wisdom of astro-
nomy, great would be our admiration. Or had he
imagined the scenery of this earth, the mountains,
the seas, and the rivers ; the grass, and the
flowers, and the variety of the forms and masses of
the leaves of the woods, and the colours which
attend the setting and the rising sun, and the hues
of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, these things,
not before existing, truly we should have been asto-
nished, and it would not have been a vain boast to
have said of such a man, " Non merita nome di
creatore, sennon Iddio ed il Poeta." But now these
things are looked on with little wonder, and to be
conscious of them with intense delight is esteemed
to be the distinguishing mark of a refined and extra-
ordinary person. The multitude of men care not
for them. It is thus with Life — that which in-
cludes all.

What is life ? Thoughts and feelings arise, with
or without our will, and we employ words to express

ON LIFE.

225

them. We are born, and our birth is unremem-
bered, and our infancy remembered but in frag-
ments ; we live on, and in living we lose the appre-
hension of life. How vain is it to think that
words can penetrate the mystery of our being !
Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance
to ourselves, and this is much. For what are we ?
Whence do we come ? and whither do we go ? Ts
birth the commencement, is death the conclusion
of our being ? What is birth and death ?

The most refined abstractions of logic conduct
to a view of life, which, though startling to the
apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual
sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished
in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from
this scene of things. I confess that I am one of
those who am unable to refuse my assent to the
conclusions of those philosophers who assert that
nothing exists but as it is perceived.

It is a decision against which all our persua-
sions struggle, and we must be long convicted
before we can be convinced that the solid universe
of external things is '' such stuff as dreams are
made of.'"' The shocking absurdities of the popu-
lar philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal con-
sequences in morals, and their violent dogmatism
concerning the source of all things, had early con-
L 3

226 ON LIFE.

ducted me to materialism. This materialism is a
seducing system to young and superficial minds.
It allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them
from thinking. But I was discontented with such
a view of things as it afforded ; man is a being of
high aspirations, " looking both before and after,""
whose " thoughts wander through eternity,'' dis-
claiming alliance with transience and decay ; inca-
pable of imagining to himself annihilation ; existing
but in the future and the past ; being, not what he
is, but what he has been and shall be. Whatever
may be his true and final destination, there is a
spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and
dissolution. This is the character of all life and
being. Each is at once the centre and the circum-
ference ; the point to which all things are referred,
and the line in which all things are contained. Such
contemplations as these, materialism and the po-
pular philosophy of mind and matter alike forbid ;
they are only consistent with the intellectual system.
It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation
of arguments sufficiently familiar to those inquiring
minds, whom alone a writer on abstruse subjects
can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most
clear and vigorous statement of the intellectual
system is to be found in Sir William Drummond's
Academical Questions. After such an exposi-

ON LIFE. 227

tion, it would be idle to translate into other words
what could only lose its energy and fitness by
the change. Examined point by point, and word
byword, the most discriminating intellects have
been able to discern no train of thoughts in the
process of reasoning, which does not conduct inevi-
tably to the conclusion which has been stated.

What follows from the admission ? It establishes
no new truth, it gives us no additional insight into
our hidden nature, neither its action nor itself.
Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build, has
much work yet remaining, as pioneer for the
overgrowth of ages. It makes one step towards this
object ; it destroys error, and the roots of error.
It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the
reformer in political and ethical questions to leave, a
vacancy. It reduces the mind to that freedom in
which it would have acted, but for the misuse of
words and signs, the instruments of its own crea-
tion. By signs, I would be understood in a wide
sense, including what is properly meant by that
term, and what I peculiarly mean. In this latter
sense, almost all familiar objects are signs, stand-
ing, not for themselves, but for others, in their
capacity of suggesting one thought which shall lead
to a train of thoughts. Our whole life is thus an
education of error.

228 ON LIFE.

Let us recollect our sensations as children.
What a distinct and intense apprehension had we
of the world and of ourselves ! Many of the cir-
cumstances of social life were then important to us
which are now no longer so. But that is not the
point of comparison on which I mean to insist.
We less habitually distinguished all that we saw
and felt, from ourselves. They seemed as it were
to constitute one mass. There are some persons
who, in this respect, are always children. Those
who are subject to the state called reverie, feel as
if their nature were dissolved into the surround-
ing universe, or as if the surrounding universe
were absorbed into their being. They are conscious
of no distinction. And these are states which
precede, or accompany, or follow an unusually in-
tense and vivid apprehension of Hfe. As men grow
up this power commonly decays, and they become
mechanical and habitual agents. Thus feelings
and then reasonings are the combined result of a
multitude of entangled thoughts, and of a series of
what are called impressions, planted by reiteration.

The view of life presented by the most refined
deductions of the intellectual philosophy, is that
of unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived.
The difference is merely nominal between those
two classes of thought, which are vulgarly distin-

ON LIFE.

229

guished by the names of ideas and of external
objects. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning,
the existence of distinct individual minds, similar
to that which is employed in now questioning its
own nature, is likewise found to be a delusion. The
words /, you^ they^ are not signs of any actual differ-
ence subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts
thus indicated, but are merely marks employed to
denote the different modifications of the one mind.

Let it not be supposed that this doctrine con-
ducts to the monstrous presumption that I, the
person who now write and think, am that one
mind. I am but a portion of it. The words /,
and you^ and they are grammatical devices invented
simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the
intense and exclusive sense usually attached to
them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to
expi^ss so subtle a conception as that to which the
Intellectual Philoi^ophy has conducted us. We
are on that verge where words abandon us, and what
wonder if we grow dizzy to look down the dark
abyss of how little we know !

The relations of things remain unchanged, by
whatever system. By the word things is to be
understood any object of thought, that is, any
thought upon which any other thought is employed,
with an apprehension of distinction. The relations

230 . ON LIFE.

of these remain unchanged ; and such is the
material of our knowledge.

What is the cause of life ? that is, how was it
produced, or what agencies distinct from life have
acted or act upon life ? All recorded generations of
mankind have wearily busied themselves in invent-
ing answers to this question ; and the result has
been, — Religion. Yet, that the basis of all things
cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges,
mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we
have any experience of its properties, and beyond
that experience how vain is argument! cannot
create, it can only perceive. It is said also to be
the cause. But cause is only a word expressing
a certain state of the human mind with regard to
the manner in which two thoughts are apprehended
to be related to each other. If any one desires to
know how unsatisfactorily the popular philosophy
employs itself upon this great question, they need
only impartially reflect upon the manner in which
thoughts develop themselves in their minds. It
is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind,
that is, of existence, is similar to mind.

ON A FUTURE STATE.

It has been the persuasion of an immense ma-
jority of human beings in all ages and nations that
we continue to live after death, — that apparent
termination of all the functions of sensitive and
intellectual existence. Nor has mankind been con-
tented with supposing that species of existence
which some philosophers have asserted ; namely,
the resolution of the component parts of the me-
chanism of a living being into its elements, and
the impossibility of the minutest particle of these
sustaining the smallest diminution. They have
clung to the idea that sensibility and thought, which
they have distinguished from the objects of it,
under the several names of spirit and matter, is,
in its own nature, less susceptible of division and
decay, and that, when the body is resolved into its
elements, the principle which animated it will
remain perpetual and unchanged. Some philo-
sophers— and those to whom we are indebted for

232 ON A FUTURE STATE.

the most stupendous discoveries in physical science,
suppose, on the other hand, that intelHgence is the
mere result of certain combinations among the
particles of its objects ; and those among them who
believe that we live after death, recur to the inter-
position of a supernatural power, which shall
overcome the tendency inherent in all material
combinations, to dissipate and be absorbed into
other forms.

Let us trace the reasonings which in one and
the other have conducted to these two opinions,
and endeavour to discover what we ought to think
on a question of such momentous interest. Let
us analyse the ideas and feelings which constitute
the contending beliefs, and watchfully establish a
discrimination between words and thoughts. Let
us bring the question to the test of experience and
fact ; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its
entire extent, what light we derive from a sustained
and comprehensive view of its component parts,
which may enable us to assert, with certainty, that
we do or do not live after death.

The examination of this subject requires that
it should be stript of all those accessory topics
which adhere to it in the common opinion of
men. The existence of a God, and a future
state of rewards and punishments, are totally

ON A FUTURE STATE. 233

foreign to the subject. If it be proved that the
world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference
necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance
in favour of a future state. It has been asserted,
indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be
numbered among the attributes of the Deity, he
will undoubtedly compensate the virtuous who
suffer during life, and that he will make every
sensitive being, who does not deserve punishment,
happy for ever. But this view of the subject, which
it would be tedious as well as superfluous to
develop and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts
the knot which we now seek to untie. Moreover,
should it be proved, on the other hand ,\ that the
mysterious principle which regulates the proceed-
ings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sen-
sitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to suppose at
the same time, that the animating power survives
the body which it has animated, by laws as inde-
pendent of any supernatural agent as those through
which it first became united with it. Nor, if a
future state be clearly proved, does it follow that
it will be a state of punishment or reward.

By the word death, we express that condition
in which natures resembling ourselves apparently
cease to be that which they were. We no longer
hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have

234 ON A FUTURE STATE.

sensations and apprehensions, we no longer par-
ticipate in them. We know no more than that
those external organs, and all that fine texture of
material frame, without which we have no expe-
rience that life or thought can subsist, are dissolved
and scattered abroad. The body is placed- under
the earth, and after a certain period there remains
no vestige even of its form. This is that contem-
plation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow
eclipses the brightness of the world. The com-
mon observer is struck with dejection at the
spectacle. He contends in vain against the per-
suasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to
be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own
destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose
voice was delightful to his ear ; whose touch met
his like sweet and subtle fire ; whose aspect spread
a visionary light upon his path — these he cannot
meet again. The organs of sense are destroyed,
and the intellectual operations dependent on them
have perished with their sources. How can a
corpse see or feel ? its eyes are eaten out, and its
heart is black and without motion. What inter-
course can two heaps of putrid clay and crumbling
bones hold together? When you can discover
where the fresh colours of the faded flower abide,
or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among

ON A FUTURE STATE. 235

the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful
contemplations of the common observer, though
the popular religion often prevents him from con-
fessing them even to himself.

The natural philosopher, in addition to the
sensations common to all men inspired by the
event of death, believes that he sees with more
certainty that it is attended with the anni-
hilation of sentiment and thought. He observes
the mental powers increase and fade with those
of the body, and even accommodate themselves
to the most transitory changes of our physical
nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties
of the vital and intellectual principle ; drunken-
ness and disease will either temporarily or per-
manently derange them. Madness or idiotcy
may utterly extinguish the most excellent and
delicate of those powers. In old age the mind
gradually withers ; and as it grew and was strength-
ened with the body, so does it together with the
body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these are
convincing evidences that so soon as the organs
of the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate
matter, sensation, and perception, and apprehen-
sion, are at an end. It is probable that what we
call thought is not an actual being, but no more
than the relation between certain parts of that
infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the

236 ON A FUTURE STATE.

universe is composed, and which ceases to exist so
soon as those parts change their position with
regard to each other. Thus colour, and sound,
and taste, and odour exist only relatively. But
let thought be considered as some peculiar sub-
stance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the
animation of living beings. Why should that sub-
stance be assumed to be something essentially dis-
tinct from all others, and exempt from subjection to
those laws from which no other substance is exempt i
It differs, indeed, from all other substances, as
electricity, and light, and magnetism, and the
constituent parts of air and earth, severally differ
from all others. Each of these is subject to change
and to decay, and to conversion into other forms.
Yet the difference between light and earth is
scarcely greater than that which exists between
life, or thought, and fire. The difference between
the two former was never alleged as an argument
for the eternal permanence of either, in that form
under which they first might offer themselves to
our notice. Why should the difference between
the two latter substances be an argument for
the prolongation of the existence of one and not
the other, when the existence of both has arrived
at their apparent termination I To say that fire
exists without manifesting any of the properties of
fire, such as Hght, heat, &c., or that the principle

ON k FUTURE STATE. 287

of life exists without consciousness, or memory, or
desire, or motive, is to resign, by an awkward dis-
tortion of language, the affirmative of the dispute.
To say that the principle of life mai/ exist in dis-
tribution among various forms, is to assert what
cannot be proved to be either true or false, but
which, were it true, annihilates all hope of exist-
ence after death, in any sense in which that event
can belong to the hopes and fears of men. Sup-
pose, however, that the intellectual and vital
principle differs in the most marked and essential
manner from all other known substances; that
they have all some resemblance between themselves
which it in no degree participates. In what
manner can this concession be made an argument
for its imperishability ? All that we see or know
perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ
indeed from everything else. But that it survives
that period, beyond which we have no experience
of its existence, such distinction and dissimilarity
affords no shadow of proof, and nothing but our
own desires could have led us to conjecture or
imagine.

Have we existed before birth ? It is difficult to
conceive the possibility of this. There is, in the
generative principle of each animal and plant, a
power which converts the substances by which it
is surrounded into a substance homogeneous with

238

ON A FUTURE STATE.

itself. That is, the relation between certain
elementary particles of matter undergo a change,
and submit to new combinations. For when we use
the words principle^ power ^ cause ^ &c., w^e mean to
express no real being, but only to class under those
terms a certain series of co-existing phenomena; but
let it be supposed that this principle is a certain sub-
stance which escapes the observation of the chemist
and anatomist. It certainly may he ; though it
is sufficiently unphilosophical to allege the pos-
sibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth. Does
it see, hear, feel, before its combination with those
organs on which sensation depends ? Does it
reason, imagine, apprehend, without those ideas
which sensation alone can communicate? If we
have not existed before birth ; if, at the period
when the parts of our nature on which thought
and life depend, seem to be woven together, they
are woven together; if there are no reasons to
suppose that we have existed before that period
at which our existence apparently commences, then
there are no grounds for supposition that we shall
continue to exist after our existence has appa-
rently ceased. So far as thought and life is con-
cerned, the same will take place with regard to us,
individually considered, after death, as had place
before our birth.

It is said that it is possible that we should con-

ON A FUTURE STATE. 239

tinue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable
to us at present. This is a most unreasonable pre-
sumption. It casts on the adherents of annihilation
the burthen of proving the negative of a question,
the affirmative of which is not supported by a single
argument, and which, by its very nature, lies beyond
the experience of the human understanding. It
is sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any proposition,
concerning which we are ignorant, just not so ab-
surd as not to be contradictory in itself, and defy
refutation. The possibility of whatever enters into
the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumph-
antly vindicated. But it is enough that such asser-
tions should be either contradictory to the known
laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our expe-
rience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our con-
sideration should be demonstrated. They persuade,
indeed, only those who desire to be persuaded.

This desire to be for ever as we are ; the reluct-
ance to a violent and unexperienced change, which
is common to all the animated and inanimate com-
binations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret
persuasion which has given birth to the opinions
of a future state.

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS.

I. THE MIND.

I. It is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we
can think of nothing which we have not perceived.
When I say that we can think of nothing, I mean,
y^ " we can imagine nothing, we can reason of nothing,

we can remember nothing, we can foresee nothing.
The most astonishing combinations of poetry, the
subtlest deductions of logic and mathematics, are
no other than combinations which the intellect
makes of sensations according to its own laws. A
catalogue of all the thoughts of the mind, and
of all their possible modifications, is a cyclopedic
history of the universe.

But, it will be objected, the inhabitants of the
various planets of this and other solar systems;
and the existence of a Power bearing the same
relation to all that we perceive and are, as what we
call a cause does to what we call effect, were never

(5

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 241

subjects of sensation, and yet the laws of mind
almost universally suggest, according to the various
disposition of each, a conjecture, a persuasion, or a
conviction of their existence. The reply is simple;
these thoughts are also to be included in the cata-
logue of existence ; they are modes in which
thoughts are combined ; the objection only adds
force to the conclusion, that beyond the limits of
perception and thought nothing can exist.

Thoughts, or ideas, or notions, call them what
you will, differ from each other, not in kind, but
in force. It has commonly been supposed that
those distinct thoughts which affect a number of
persons, at regular intervals, during the passage
of a multitude of other thoughts, which are called
reali or external objects^ are totally different in kind
from those which affect only a few persons, and
which recur at irregular intervals, and are usually
more obscure and indistinct, such as hallucinations,
dreams, and the ideas of madness. No essential
distinction between any one of these ideas, or any
class of them, is founded on a correct observation of
the nature of things, but merely on a considera-
tion of what thoughts are most invariably sub-
servient to the security and happiness of life; and
if nothing more were expressed by the distinction,
the philosopher might safely accommodate his

VOL. I. M

242 SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS.

language to that of the vulgar. But they pretend
to assert an essential difference, which has no
foundation in truth, and which suggests a narrow
and false conception of universal nature, the parent
of the most fatal errors in speculation. A specific
difference between every thought of the mind, is,
indeed, a necessary consequence of that law by
which it perceives diversity and number; but a
generic and essential difference is wholly arbitrary.
The principle of the agreement and similarity of
all thoughts, is, that they are all thoughts ; the
principle of their disagreement consists in the
variety and irregularity of the occasions on which
they arise in the mind. That in which they
agree, to that in which they differ, is as everything
to nothing. Important distinctions, of various
degrees of force, indeed, are to be established
between them, if they were, as they may be, subjects
of ethical and oeconomical discussion ; but that is
a question altogether distinct.

By considering all knowledge as bounded by
perception, whose operations may be indefinitely
combined, we arrive at a conception of Nature in-
expressibly more magnificent, simple and true, than
accords with the ordinary systems of complicated
and partial consideration. Nor does a contem-
plation of the universe, in this comprehensive and

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 243

synthetical view, exclude the subtlest analysis of its
modifications and parts.

A scale might be formed, graduated according
to the degrees of a combined ratio of intensity,
duration, connection, periods of recurrence, and
utility, which would be the standard, according to
which all ideas might be measured, and an unin-
terrupted chain of nicely shadowed distinctions
would be observed, from the faintest impression on
the senses, to the most distinct combination of
those impressions ; from the simplest of those com-
binations, to that mass of knowledge which, includ-
ing our own nature, constitutes what we call the
universe.

We are intuitively conscious of our own ex-
istence, and of that connection in the train
of our successive ideas, which we term our
identity. We are conscious also of the existence
of other minds; but not intuitively. Our evi-
dence, with respect to the existence of other
minds, is founded upon a very complicated relation
of ideas, which it is foreign to the purpose of this
treatise to anatomise. The basis of this relation
is, undoubtedly, a periodical recurrence of masses
of ideas, which our voluntary determinations have,
M 2

244

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS.

in one peculiar direction, no power to circum-
scribe or to arrest, and against the recurrence of
which they can only imperfectly provide. The
irresistible laws of thought constrain us to believe
that the precise limits of our actual ideas are not
the actual limits of possible ideas ; the law, accord-
ing to which these deductions are drawn, is called
analogy ; and this is the foundation of all our
inferences, from one idea to another, inasmuch as
they resemble each other.

We see trees, houses, fields, living beings in our
own shape, and in shapes more or less analogous to
our own. These are perpetually changing the
mode of their existence relatively to us. To
express the varieties of these modes, we say, we
move^ they move ; and as this motion is continual,
though not uniform, we express our conception of
the diversities of its course by — it has been^ it is,
it shall be. These diversities are events or objects,
and are essential, considered relatively to human
identity, for the existence of the human mind. For
if the inequalities, produced by what has been
termed the operations of the external universe,
were levelled by the perception of our being, unit-
ing, and filling up their interstices, motion and
mensuration, and time, and space ; the elements of

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 245

the human mind being thus abstracted, sensation
and imagination cease. Mind cannot be considered
pure.

I. WHAT METAPHYSICS ARE. ERRORS IN THE USUAL

METHODS OF CONSIDERING THEM.

We do not attend sufficiently to what passes
within ourselves. We combine words, combined a
thousand times before. In our minds we assume
entire opinions ; and in the expression of those
opinions, entire phrases, when we would philoso-
phise. Our whole style of expression and senti-
ment is infected with the tritest plagiarisms. Our
words are dead, our thoughts are cold and bor-
rowed.

Let us contemplate facts ; let us, in the great
study of ourselves, resolutely compel the mind to a
rigid consideration of itself. We are not content
with conjecture, and inductions, and syllogisms, in
sciences regarding external objects. As in these,
let us also, in considering the phenomena of mind,
severely collect those facts which cannot be dis-
puted. Metaphysics will thus possess this conspi-
cuous advantage over every other science, that each
student, by attentively referring to his own mind,
may ascertain the authorities, upon which any

246

SPECULATIONS OX METAPHYSICS.

assertions regarding it are supported. There can
thus be no deception, we ourselves being the depo-
sitaries of the evidence of the subject which we
consider.

Metaphysics may be defined as an inquiry con-
cerning those things belonging to, or connected
/Ivith, the internal nature of man.

It is said that mind produces motion; and it
might as well have been said, that motion produces
^- mind.

II. DIFFICULTY OF ANALYZING THE HUMAN MIND.

If it were possible that a person should give a
faithful history of his being, from the earliest epochs
of his recollection, a picture would be presented
such as the world has never contemplated before.
A mirror would be held up to all men in which
they might behold their own recollections, and, in
dim perspective, their shadowy hopes and fears, —
all that they dare not, or that daring and desiring,
they could not expose to the open eyes of day.
But thought can with difficulty visit the intricate
and winding chambers which it inhabits. It is like
a river whose rapid and perpetual stream flows
outwards ; — like one in dread who speeds through
the recesses of some haunted pile, and dares not

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 247

look behind. The caverns of the mind are obscure,
and shadowy ; or pervaded with a lustre, beautifully
bright indeed, but shining not beyond their portals.
If it were possible to be where we have been, vitally
and indeed — if, at the moment of our presence there,
we could define the results of our experience, — if the
passage from sensation to reflection — from a state
of passive perception to voluntary contemplation,
were not so dizzying and so tumultuous, this attempt
would be less difficult. /

/

UU.A

~f^ /- H-^,1. T^U^ *'y7h, Om^^

III. HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON.

Most of the errors of philosophers have arisen
from considering the human being in a point of
view too detailed and circumscribed. He is not a
moral, and an intellectual, — but also, and pre-emi-
nently, an imaginative being. His own mind is his
law ; his own mind is all things to him. If we would
arrive at any knowledge which should be serviceable
from the practical conclusions to which it leads, we
ought to consider the mind of man and the universe
as the great whole on which to exercise our specu-
lations. Here, above all, verbal disputes ought to
be laid aside, though this has long been their chosen
field of battle. It imports little to inquire whether
thought be distinct from the objects of thought.

248 SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS.

The use of the words external and internal^ as appHed
to the estabhshment of this distinction, has been
the symbol and the source of much dispute. This
is merely an affair of words, and as the dispute
deserves, to say, that when speaking of the objects
of thought, we indeed only describe one of the
forms of thought — or that, speaking of thought, we
only apprehend one of the operations of the uni-
versal system of beings. '}M-^€hylU.kj^ jJ/^Jjri^U^t, \^)

IV. CATALOGUE OF THE PHENOMENA OP DREAMS, AH

CONNECTING SLEEPING AND WAKING.

I. Let us reflect on our infancy, and give as
faithfully as possible a relation of the events of
sleep.

And first I am bound to present a faithful pic-
ture of my own peculiar nature relatively to sleep.
I do not doubt that were every individual to imi-
tate me, it would be found that among many cir-
cumstances peculiar to their individual nature, a
sufficiently general resemblance would be found to
prove the connection existing between those pecu-
liarities and the most universal phenomena. I
shall employ caution, indeed, as to the facts which
I state, that they contain nothing false or exagger-
ated. But they contain no more than certain

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. 249

elucidations of my own nature; concerning the
degree in which it resembles, or differs from, that
of others, I am by no means accurately aware.
It is sufficient, however, to caution the reader
against drawing general inferences from particular
instances.

I omit the general instances of delusion in fever
or delirium, as well as mere dreams considered in
themselves. A deHneation of this subject, however
inexhaustible and interesting, is to be passed over.

What is the connection of sleeping and of
waking ?

II. I distinctly remember dreaming three several
times, between intervals of two or more years, the
same precise dream. It was not so much what
is ordinarily called a dream ; the single image,
unconnected with all other images, of a youth who
was educated at the same school with myself,
presented itself in sleep. Even now, after the
lapse of many years, I can never hear the name
of this youth, without the three places where
I dreamed of him presenting themselves distinctly
to my mind.

III. In dreams, images acquire associations pecu-
liar to dreaming ; so that the idea of a particular

250 SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS.

house, when it recurs a second time in dreams,
will have relation with the idea of the same house,
in the first time, of a nature entirely different from
that which the house excites, when seen or thought
of in relation to waking ideas.

IV. I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and
unaccountable connection of which with the ob-
scure parts of my own nature, I have been irre-
sistibly impressed. I have beheld a scene which
has produced no unusual effect on my thoughts.
After the lapse of many years I have dreamed of
this scene. It has hung on my memory, it has
haunted my thoughts, at intervals, with the per-
tinacity of an object connected with human affec-
tions. I have visited this scene again. Neither
the dream could be dissociated from the landscape,
nor the landscape from the dream, nor feelings,
such as neither singly could have awakened, from
both. But the most remarkable event of this nature,
which ever occurred to me, happened five years
ago at Oxford. I was walking with a friend, in
the neighbourhood of that city, engaged in earnest
and interesting conversation. We suddenly turned
the corner of a lane, and the view, which its high
banks and hedges had concealed, presented itself.

SPECULATIONS ON iMETAPHYSlCS. 251

The view consisted of a windmill, standing in one
among many plashy meadows, inclosed with stone
walls ; the irregular and broken ground, between
the wall and the road on which we stood ; a long
low hill behind the windmill, and a grey covering
of uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. It
was that season when the last leaf had just fallen
from the scant and stunted ash. The scene surely
was a common scene ; the season and the hour
little calculated to kindle lawless thought ; it was
a tame uninteresting assemblage of objects, such
as would drive the imagination for refuge in serious
and sober talk, to the evening fireside, and the
dessert of winter fruits and wine. The effect which
it produced on me was not such as could have been
expected. I suddenly remembered to have seen
that exact scene in some dream of long *

* Here I was obliged to leave off, overcome by thrilling horror.
This remark closes this fragment, which was written in 1815. I
remember well his coming to me from writing it, pale and agitated, to
seek refuge in conversation from the fearful emotions it excited. No
man, as these fragments prove, had such keen sensations as Shelley.
His nervous temperament was wound up by the delicacy of his health
to an intense degree of sensibility, and while his active mind pondered
for ever upon, and drew conclusions from his sensations, his reveries
increased their vivacity, till they mingled with, and were one with
thought, and both became absorbing and tumultuous, even to physical
pain. — M. S.

FRAGMENTS

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

I. — PLAN OF A TREATISE ON MORALS.

That great science which regards nature and
the operations of the human mind, is popularly
divided into Morals and Metaphysics. The latter
relates to a just classification, and the assignment
of distinct names to its ideas ; the former regards
simply the determination of that arrangement of
them which produces the greatest and most solid
happiness. It is admitted that a virtuous or moral
action, is that action which, when considered in
all its accessories and consequences, is fitted to
produce the highest pleasure to the greatest
number of sensitive beings. The laws according to
which all pleasure, since it cannot be equally felt

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 253

by all sensitive beings, ought to be distributed by a
voluntary agent, are reserved for a separate chapter.

The design of this little treatise is restricted to
the development of the elementary principles of
morals. As far as regards that purpose, meta-
physical science will be treated merely so far as a
source of negative truth ; whilst morality will be
considered as a science, respecting which we can
arrive at positive conclusions.

The misguided imaginations of men have ren-
dered the ascertaining of what is not true,
the principal direct service which metaphysical
science can bestow upon moral science. Moral
science itself is the doctrine of the voluntary
actions of man, as a sentient and social being.
These actions depend on the thoughts in his
mind. But there is a mass of popular opinion,
from which the most enlightened persons are
seldom wholly free, into the truth or falsehood of
which it is incumbent on us to inquire, before we
can arrive at any firm conclusions as to the con-
duct which we ought to pursue in the regulation of
our own minds, or towards our fellow-beings ; or
before we can ascertain the elementary laws,
according to which these thoughts, from which
these actions flow, are originally combined.

254 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

The object of the forms according to which
human society is administered, is the happiness of
the individuals composing the communities which
they regard, and these forms are perfect or imper-
fect in proportion to the degree in which they
promote this end.

This object is not merely the quantity of happi-
ness enjoyed by individuals as sensitive beings, but
the mode in which it should be distributed among
them as social beings. It is not enough, if such
a coincidence can be conceived as possible, that
one person or class of persons should enjoy the
highest happiness, whilst another is suffering a
disproportionate degree of misery. It is necessary
that the happiness produced by the common efforts,
and preserved by the common care, should be dis-
tributed according to the just claims of each indi-
vidual ; if not, although the quantity produced
should be the same, the end of society would
remain unfulfilled. The object is in a compound
proportion to the quantity of happiness produced,
and the correspondence of the mode in which it is
distributed, to the elementary feelings of man as a
social being.

The disposition in an individual to promote this
object is called virtue ; ^nd the two constituent
parts of virtue, benevolence and justice, are corre-

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 255

lative with these two great portions of the only true
object of all voluntary actions of a human being.
Benevolence is the desire to be the author of good,
and justice the apprehension of the manner in
which good ought to be done.

Justice and benevolence result from the elemen-
tary laws of the human mind.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE NATURE OP VIRTUE.

Sect. 1. General View of the Nature and Objects of Virtue. — 2. The
Origin and Basis of Virtue, as founded on the Elementary Principles
of Mind. — 3. The Laws which flow from the nature of Mind regu-
lating the application of those principles to human actions. — 4. Virtue,
a possible attribute of man.

We exist in the midst of a multitude of beings
like ourselves, upon whose happiness most of our
actions exert some obvious and decisive influence.

The regulation of this influence is the object of
moral science.

We know that we are susceptible of receiving
painful or pleasurable impressions of greater or less
intensity and duration. That is called good which
produces pleasure ; that is called evil which pro-
duces pain. These are general names, applicable to

256

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

every class of causes, from which an overbalance of
pain or pleasure may result. But when a human
being is the active instrument of generating or
diffusing happiness, the principle through which it
is most effectually instrumental to that purpose, is
called virtue. And benevolence, or the desire to
be the author of good, united with justice, or an
apprehension of the manner in which that good is
to be done, constitutes virtue.

But, wherefore should a man be benevolent and
just ? The immediate emotions of his nature,
especially in its most inartificial state, prompt him to
inflict pain, and to arrogate dominion. He desires
to heap superfluities to his own store, although
others perish with famine. He is propelled to
guard against the smallest invasion of his own
liberty, though he reduces others to a condition
of the most pitiless servitude. He is revengeful,
proud, and selfish. Wherefore should he curb
these propensities ?

It is inquired for what reason a human being
should engage in procuring the happiness, or
refrain from producing the pain of another ? When
a reason is required to prove the necessity of
adopting any system of conduct, what is it that the
objector demands ? He requires proof of that
system of conduct being such as will most effectu-

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 257

ally promote the happiness of mankind. To
demonstrate this, is to render a moral reason.
Such is the object of Virtue.

A common sophism, which, like many others,
depends on the abuse of a metaphorical expression
to a literal purpose, has produced much of the
confusion which has involved the theory of morals.
It is said that no person is bound to be just or
kind, if, on his neglect, he should fail to incur
some penalty. Duty is obligation. There can be
no obligation without an obligor. Virtue is a law,
to which it is the will of the lawgiver that we
should conform ; which will we should in no
manner be bound to obey, unless some dreadful
punishment were attached to disobedience. This
is the philosophy of slavery and superstition.

In fact, no person can be hound or obliged^
without some power preceding to bind and oblige.
If I observe a man bound hand and foot, I know
that some one bound him. But if I observe him
returning self-satisfied from the performance of
some action, by which he has been the willing
author of extensive benefit, I do not infer that
the anticipation of hellish agonies, or the hope of
heavenly reward, has constrained him to such an act.

* A leaf of manuscript is wanting here, manifestly treating of self-
love and disinterestedness. — M.S.

3 ^^i^Thn^M^r^ ^n-L^

258 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

It remains to be stated in what manner the
sensations which constitute the basis of virtue
originate in the human mind ; what are the laws
which it receives there ; how far the principles of
mind allow it to be an attribute of a human being;
and, lastly, what is the probability of persuading
mankind to adopt it as a universal and systematic
motive of conduct.

BENEVOLENCE.

There is a class of emotions which we instinctively
avoid. A human being, such as is man considered
in his origin, a child a month old, has a very imper-
fect consciousness of the existence of other natures
resembling itself. All the energies of its being are
directed to the extinction of the pains with which it
is perpetually assailed. At length it discovers that
it is surrounded by natures susceptible of sensations
similar to its own. It is very late before children
attain to this knowledge. If a child observes, without
emotion, its nurse or its mother suifering acute
pain, it is attributable rather to ignorance than
insensibility. So soon as the accents and gestures,
significant of pain, are referred to the feelings which
they express, they awaken in the mind of the be-

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 259

holder a desire that they should cease. Pain is thus
apprehended to be evil for its own sake, without any
other necessary reference to the mind by which its
existence is perceived, than such as is indispensable
to its perception . The tendencies of our original sen-
sations, indeed, all have for their object the preser-
vation of our individual being. But these are passive
and unconscious. In proportion as the mind acquires
an active power, the empire of these tendencies
becomes limited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a
solitary beast, is selfish, because its mind is incapable
of receiving an accurate intimation of the nature of
pain as existing in beings resembling itself. The
inhabitant of a highly civilised community will
more acutely sympathise with the sufferings and
enjoyments of others, than the inhabitant of a
society of a less degree of civilisation. He who
shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by
familiarity with the highest specimens of poetry
and philosophy, will usually sympathise more than
one engaged in the less refined functions of manual
labour. Every one has experience of the fact,
that to sympathise with the sufferings of another,
is to enjoy a transitory oblivion of his own.

The mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as
it were, of perceiving and abhorring evil, however
remote from the immediate sphere of sensations with

260

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

which that individual mind is conversant. Imagi-
nation or mind employed in prophetically imaging
forth its objects, is that faculty of human nature
on which every gradation of its progress, nay, every,
the minutest, change, depends. Pain or pleasure, if
subtly analysed, will be found to consist entirely in
prospect. The only distinction between the selfish
man and the virtuous man is, that the imagination
of the former is confined within a narrow limit,
whilst that of the latter embraces a comprehensive
circumference. In this sense, wisdom and virtue
may be said to be inseparable, and criteria of each
other. Selfishness is the offspring of ignorance and
mistake ; it is the portion of unreflecting infancy,
and savage solitude, or of those whom toil or
evil occupations have blunted or rendered torpid ;
disinterested benevolence is the product of a culti-
vated imagination, and has an intimate connexion
with all the arts which add ornament, or dignity,
or power, or stability to the social state of man.
Virtue is thus entirely a refinement of civilised
life ; a creation of the human mind ; or, rather, a
combination which it has made, according to
elementary rules contained within itself, of the
feelings suggested by the relations established
between man and man.
All the theories which have refined and exalted

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 261

humanity, or those which have been devised as allevi-
ations of its mistakes and evils, have been based upon
the elementary emotions of disinterestedness, which
we feel to constitute the majesty of our nature.
Patriotism, as it existed in the ancient republics,
was never, as has been supposed, a calculation of
personal advantages. When Mutius Scsevola
thrust his hand into the burning coals, and Re-
gulus returned to Carthage, and Epicharis sus-
tained the rack silently, in the torments of which she
knew that she would speedily perish, rather than
betray the conspirators to the tyrant ; * these illus-
trious persons certainly made a small estimate of
their private interest. If it be said that they
sought posthumous fame ; instances are not wanting
in history which prove that men have even defied
infamy for the sake of good. But there is a great
error in the world with respect to the selfishness
of fame. It is certainly possible that a person
should seek distinction as a medium of personal
gratification. But the love of fame is frequently
no more than a desire that the feelings of others
should confirm, illustrate, and sympathise with, our
own. In this respect it is allied with all that
draws us out of ourselves. It is the " last infirmity
of noble minds." Chivalry was likewise founded

* Tacitus.

262 SPECULATIONS ON MOBALS.

on the theory of self-sacrifice. Love possesses so
extraordinary a power over the human heart, only
because disinterestedness is united with the natural
propensities. These propensities themselves are
comparatively impotent in cases where the ima-
gination of pleasure to be given, as well as to be
received, does not enter into the account. Let it
not be objected that patriotism, and chivalry, and
sentimental love, have been the fountains of enor-
mous mischief. They are cited only to estabUsh
the proposition that, according to the elementary
principles of mind, man is capable of desiring and
pursuing good for its own sake.

JUSTICE.

The benevolent propensities are thus inherent
in the human mind. We are impelled to seek the
happiness of others. We experience a satisfaction
in being the authors of that happiness. Every-
thing that lives is open to impressions of pleasure
and pain. We are led by our benevolent propensi-
ties to regard every human being indifferently with
whom we come in contact. They have preference
only with respect to those who offer themselves
most obviously to our notice. Human beings are

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 268

indiscriminating and blind; they will avoid inflicting
pain, though that pain should be attended with
eventual benefit ; they will seek to confer pleasure
without calcuating the mischief that may result.
They benefit one at the expense of many.

There is a sentiment in the human mind that regu-
lates benevolence in its application as a principle
of action. This is the sense of justice. Justice,
as well as benevolence, is an elementary law of
human nature. It is through this principle that
men are impelled to distribute any means of plea-
sure which benevolence may suggest the commu-
nication of to others, in equal portions among an
equal number of applicants. If ten men are ship-
wrecked on a desert island, they distribute whatever
subsistence may remain to them, into equal portions
among themselves. If six of them conspire to
deprive the remaining four of their share, their
conduct is termed unjust.

The existence of pain has been shown to be a
circumstance which the human mind regards with
dissatisfaction, and of which it desires the cessa-
tion. It is equally according to its nature to
desire that the advantages to be enjoyed by a
hmited number of persons should be enjoyed equally
by all. This proposition is supported by the evi-
dence of indisputable facts. Tell some ungarbled

264 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

tale of a number of persons being made the victims
of the enjoyments of one, and he who would appeal
in favour of any system which might produce such
an evil to the primary emotions of our nature, would
have nothing to reply. Let two persons, equally
strangers, make application for some benefit in the
possession of a third to bestow, and to which he
feels that they have an equal claim. They are both
sensitive beings; pleasure and pain affect them alike.

CHAPTER II.

It is foreign to the general scope of this little
Treatise to encumber a simple argument by contro-
verting any of the trite objections of habit or
fanaticism. But there are two ; the first, the basis
of all political mistake, and the second, the prolific
cause and effect of religious error, which it seems
useful to refute.

First, it is enquired, " Wherefore should a man
be benevolent and just V The answer has been
given in the preceding chapter.

If a man persists to inquire why he ought to pro-
mote thehappinessof mankind, he demands a mathe-
matical or metaphysical reason for a moral action.

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 265

The absurdity of this scepticism is more apparent,
but not less real than the exacting a moral reason
for a mathematical or metaphysical fact. If any
person should refuse to admit that all the radii of a
circle are of equal length, or that human actions
are necessarily determined by motives, until it
could be proved that these radii and these actions
uniformly tended to the production of the greatest
general good, who would not wonder at the unrea-
sonable and capricious association of his ideas ?

The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I
imagine, at this advanced era of human intellect, be
held excused from entering into a controversy with
those reasoners, if such there are, who would claim
an exemption from its decrees in favour of any one
among those diversified systems of obscure opinion
respecting morals, which, under thename of religions,
have in various ages and countries prevailed among
mankind. Besides that if, as these reasoners have
pretended, eternal torture or happiness will ensue
as the consequence of certain actions, we should be
no nearer the possession of a standard to determine
what actions were right and wrong, even if this pre-
tended revelation, which is by no means the case,
had furnished us with a complete catalogue of

VOL. I. N

266

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

them. The character of actions as virtuous or
vicious would by no means be determined alone by
the personal advantage or disadvantage of each
moral agent individually considered. Indeed, an
action is often virtuous in proportion to the great-
ness of the personal calamity which the author
willingly draws upon himself by daring to perform it.
It is because an action produces an overbalance of
pleasure or pain to the greatest number of sentient
beingSj and not merely because its consequences
are beneficial or injurious to the author of that
action, that it is good or evil. Nay, this latter
consideration has a tendency to pollute the purity
of virtue, inasmuch as it consists in the motive
rather than in the consequences of an action. A
person who should labour for the happiness of man-
kind lest he should be tormented eternally in Hell,
would with reference to that motive possess as little
claim to the epithet of virtuous, as he who should
torture, imprison, and burn them alive, a more usual
and natural consequence of such principles, for the
sake of the enjoyments of Heaven.

My neighbour, presuming on his strength, may
direct me to perform or to refrain from a parti-
cular action ; indicating a certain arbitrary penalty
in the event of disobedience within his power to in-
flict. My action, if modified by his menaces, can

SPECULATIONS ON MOKALS. 267

in no degree participate in virtue. He has afforded
me no criterion as to what is right or wrong. A
king, or an assembly of men, may pubHsh a pro-
clamation affixing any penalty to any particular
action, but that is not immoral because such penalty
is affixed. Nothing is more evident than that the
epithet of virtue is inapplicable to the refraining
from that action on account of the evil arbitrarily
attached to it. If the action is in itself beneficial,
virtue would rather consist in not refraining from
it, but in firmly defying the personal consequences
attached to its performance.

Some usurper of supernatural energy might sub-
due the whole globe to his power ; he might possess
new and unheard-of resources for induing his
punishments with the most terrible attributes of
pain. The torments of his victims might be in-
tense in their degree, and protracted to an infinite
duration. Still the " will of the lawgiver " would
afford no surer criterion as to what actions were
right or wrong. It would only increase the pos-
sible virtue of those who refuse to become the
instruments of his tyranny.

n2

268 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

II. — MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE
DIFFERENCE, NOT THE RESEMBLANCE, OF PERSONS.

The internal influence, derived from the consti-
tution of the mind from which they flow, produces
that pecuhar modification of actions, which makes
them intrinsically good or evil.

To attain an apprehension of the importance of
this distinction, let us visit, in imagination, the
proceedings of some metropolis. Consider the
multitude of human beings who inhabit it, and
survey, in thought, the actions of the several classes
into which they are divided. Their obvious actions
are apparently uniform : the stability of human
society seems to be maintained sufficiently by the
uniformity of the conduct of its members, both with
regard to themselves, and with regard to others.
The labourer arises at a certain hour, and applies
himself to the task enjoined him. The functionaries
of government and law are regularly employed in
their offices and courts. The trader holds a train
of conduct from which he never deviates. The
ministers of religion employ an accustomed lan-
guage, and maintain a decent and equable regard.
The army is drawn forth, the motions of every
soldier are such as they were expected to be ; the
general commands, and his words are echoed from

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 269

troop to trooji. The domestic actions of men are,
for the most part, undistinguishable one from the
other, at a superficial glance. The actions which
are classed under the general appellation of mar-
riage, education, friendship, v&c, are perpetually
going on, and to a superficial glance, are similar
one to the other.

But, if we would see the truth of things, they
must be stripped of this fallacious appearance of
uniformity. In truth, no one action has, when
considered in its whole extent, any essential resem-
blance with any other. Each individual, who,
composes the vast multitude which we have been
contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind, which,
whilst the features of the great mass of his actions
remain uniform, impresses the minuter lineaments
with its peculiar hues. Thus, whilst his life, as a
whole, is like the lives of other men, in detail it is
most unlike ; and the more subdivided the actions
become; that is, the more they enter into that class
which have a vital influence on the happiness of
others and his own, so much the more are they
distinct from those of other men.

Those little, nameless unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love/'

as well as those deadly outrages which are

1^

270 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

inflicted by a look, a word — or less —the very
refraining from some faint and most evanescent
expression of countenance ; these flow from a
profounder source than the series of our habitual
conduct, which, it has been already said, derives its
origin from without. These are the actions, and
such as these, which make human life what it is,
and are the fountains of all the good and evil with
which its entire surface is so widely and impar-
tially overspread ; and though they are called
minute, they are called so in compliance with the
blindness of those who cannot estimate their im-
portance. It is in the due appreciating the
general effects of their peculiarities, and in culti-
vating the habit of acquiring decisive knowledge
respecting the tendencies arising out of them in
particular cases, that the most important part of
moral science consists. The deepest abyss of
these vast and multitudinous caverns, it is neces-
sary that we should visit.

This is the difference between social and indi-
vidual man. Not that this distinction is to be
considered definite, or characteristic of one human
being as compared with another, it denotes rather
two classes of agency, common in a degree to every
human being. None is exempt, indeed, from that
species of influence which affects, as it were, the sur-

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS. 271

face of his being, and gives the specific outhne to his
conduct. Almost all that is ostensible submits to
that legislature created by the general representa-
tion of the past feelings of mankind — imperfect as
it is from a variety of causes, as it exists in the
government, the religion, and domestic habits.
Those who do not nominally, yet actually, submit
to the same power. The external features of
their conduct, indeed, can no more escape it, than
the clouds can escape from the stream of the wind ;
and his opinion, which he often hopes he has dis-
passionately secured from all contagion of prejudice
and vulgarity, would be found, on examination, to
be the inevitable excrescence of the very usages
from which he vehemently dissents. Internally
all is conducted otherwise; the efficiency, the
essence, the vitality of actions, derives its colour
from what is no ways contributed to from any exter-
nal source. Like the plant, which while it derives
the accident of its size and shape from the soil in
which it springs, and is cankered, or distorted, or
inflated, yet retains those qualities which essen-
tially divide it from all others ; so that hemlock
continues to be poison, and the violet does not
cease to emit its odour in whatever soil it may
grow.

We consider our own nature too superficially.

272 SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

We look on all that in ourselves with which we
can discover a resemblance in others ; and consider
those resemblances as the materials of moral
knowledge. It is in the differences that it actually
consists.

ION;

OR, OF THE ILIAD ;

Cranslatclif (rem ^lato.

Socrates and Ion.

Socrates. — Hail to thee, O Ion ! from whence
returnest thou amongst us now ? — from thine own
native Ephesus?

Ion. —No, Socrates ; I come from Epidaurus and
the feasts in honour of iEsculapius.

Socrates. — Had the Epidaurians instituted a
contest of rhapsody in honour of the God ?

loN. — And not in rhapsodies alone ; there were
contests in every species of music.

Socrates. — And in which did you contend ? And
what was the success of your efforts ?

Ion. — I bore away the first prize at the games,
O Socrates.

Socrates. — Well done ! You have now only to
consider how you shall win the Panathensea.
n3

274

lOK

Ion. — That may also happen, God willing.

Socrates. — Your profession, O Ion, has often
appeared to me an enviable one. For, together
with the nicest care of your person, and the most
studied elegance of dress, it imposes upon you the
necessity of a familiar acquaintance with many and
excellent poets, and especially with Homer, the
most admirable of them all. Nor is it merely
because you can repeat the verses of this great
poet, that I envy you, but because you fathom his
inmost thoughts. For he is no rhapsodist who
does not understand the whole scope and intention
of the poet, and is not capable of interpreting it to
his audience. This he cannot do without a full
comprehension of the meaning of the author he
undertakes to illustrate ; and worthy, indeed, of
envy are those who can fulfil these conditions.

Ion. — Thou speakest truth, O Socrates. And,
indeed, I have expended my study particularly on
this part of my profession. I flatter myself that
no man living excels me in the interpretation of
Homer; neither Metrodorus of Lampsacus, nor
Stesimbrotus the Thasian, nor Glauco, nor any
other rhapsodist of the present times can express
so many various and beautiful thoughts upon Homer
as I can.

Socrates. — I am persuaded of your eminent skill,

OR, OF THE IMAD. Z i i)

O Ion. You will not, I hope, refuse me a specimen
of it?

Ion. — And, indeed, it would be worth your
while to hear me declaim upon Homer. I deserve
a golden crown from his admirers.

Socrates. — And I will find leisure some day or
other to request you to favour me so far. At pre-
sent, I will only trouble you with one question.
Do you excel in explaining Homer alone, or are
you conscious of a similar power with regard to
Hesiod and Archilochus ?

Ion. — I possess this high degree of skill with
regard to Homer alone, and I consider that suffi-
cient.

Socrates. — Are there any subjects upon which
Homer and Hesiod say the same things ?

Ion. — Many, as it seems to me.

Socrates. — Whether do you demonstrate these
things better in Homer or Hesiod ?

Ion. — In the same manner, doubtless; inasmuch
as they say the same words with regard to the same
things.

Socrates. — But with regard to those things in
which they differ ; — Homer and Hesiod both treat
of divination, do they not ?

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — Do you think that you or a diviner

276 ION ;

would make the best exposition, respecting all that
these poets say of divination, both as they agree
and as they differ ?

Jon. — A diviner probably.

Socrates. — Suppose you were a diviner, do you
not think that you could explain the discrepancies
of those poets on the subject of your profession, if
you understand their agreement ?

Ion. — Clearly so.

Socrates. — How does it happen then that you
are possessed of skill to illustrate Homer, and not
Hesiod, or any other poet in an equal degree ? Is
the subject matter of the poetry of Homer different
from all other poets' ? Does he not principally
treat of war and social intercourse, and of the dis-
tinct functions and characters of the brave man
and the coward, the professional and private per-
son, the mutual relations which subsist between the
Gods and men ; together with the modes of their
intercourse, the phsenomena of Heaven, the secrets
of Hades, and the origin of Gods and heroes ? Are
not these the materials from which Homer wrought
his poem ?

Ion. — Assuredly, O Socrates.

Socrates. — And the other poets, do they not
treat of the same matter ?

Ion. — Certainly : but not like Homer.

OR, OF THE TLIAD. 277

Socrates. — How ! Worse ?

Ion.— -Oh ! far worse.

Socrates. — Then Homer treats of them better
than they ?

Ion. — Oh ! Jupiter ! — how much better !

Socrates. — Amongst a number of persons em-
ployed in solving a problem of arithmetic, might
not a person know, my dear Ion, which had given
the right answer ?

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — The same person who had been
aware of the false one, or some other ?

Ion. — The same, clearly.

Socrates. — That is, some one who understood
arithmetic ?

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — Among a number of persons giving
their opinions on the wholesomeness of different
foods, whether would one person be capable to pro-
nounce upon the rectitude of the opinions of those
who judged rightly, and another on the erroneous-
ness of those which were incorrect, or would the
same person be competent to decide respecting
them both ?

Ion. — The same, evidently.

Socrates. — What would you call that person ?

Ion. — A physician.

278 ION ;

Socrates. — We may assert then, universally,
that the same person who is competent to deter-
mine the truth, is competent also to determine the
falsehood of whatever assertion is advanced on the
same subject ; and, it is manifest, that he who can-
not judge respecting the falsehood, or unfitness of
what is said upon a given subject, is equally incom-
petent to determine upon its truth or beauty ?

Ion. — Assuredly.

Socrates. — The same person would then be com-
petent or incompetent for both ?

Ion. — Yes.

Socrates. — Do you not say that Homer and the
other poets, and among them Hesiod and Archilo-
chus, speak of the same things, but unequally ; one
better and the other worse ?

Ion. — And I speak tinith.

Socrates. — But if you can judge of what is well
said by the one, you must also be able to judge of
what is ill said by another, inasmuch as it expresses
less correctly.

Ion. — It should seem so.

Socrates. — Then, my dear friend, we should not
err if we asserted that Ion possessed a like power
of illustration respecting Homer and all other
poets ; especially since he confesses that the same
person must be esteemed a competent judge of all

OR, OF THE ILIAD. 279

those who speak on the same subjects; inasmuch as
those subjects are understood by him when spoken
of by one, and the subject-matter of almost all the
poets is the same.

Ion. — What can be the reason then, O Socrates,
that when any other poet is the subject of conver-
sation I cannot compel my attention, and I feel
utterly unable to declaim anything worth talking
of, and positively go to sleep ? But when any one
makes mention of Homer, my mind applies itself
without effort to the subject ; I awaken as if it
were from a trance, and a profusion of eloquent
expressions suggest themselves involuntarily ?

Socrates. — It is not difficult to suggest the cause
of this, my dear friend. You are evidently unable to
declaim on Homer according to art and knowledge;
for did your art endow you with this faculty, you
would be equally capable of exerting it with regard
to any other of the poets. Is not poetry, as an art
or a faculty, a thing entire and one ?

Ion. — Assuredly.

Socrates. — The same mode of consideration must
be admitted with respect to all arts which are seve-
rally one and entire. Do you desire to hear what
I understand by this, O Ion ?

Ion. — Yes, by Jupiter, Socrates, I am delighted
with listening to you wise men.

280 ION ;

Socrates. — Ifc is you who are wise, my dear Ion ;
you rhapsodists, actors, and the authors of the
poems you recite. I, hke an unprofessional and
private man, can only speak the truth. Observe
how common, vulgar, and level to the comprehen-
sion of any one, is the question which I now ask
relative to the same consideration belonging to one
entire art. Is not painting an art whole and
entire ?

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — Did you ever know a person compe-
tent to judge of the paintings of Polygnotus, the
son of Aglaophon, and incompetent to judge of the
production of any other painter ; who, on the sup-
position of the works of other painters being exhi-
bited to him, was wholly at a loss, and very much
inclined to go to sleep, and lost all faculty of rea-
soning on the subject ; but when his opinion was
required of Polygnotus, or any one single painter
you please, awoke, paid attention to the subject, and
discoursed on it with great eloquence and sagacity 2

loN. — Never, by Jupiter !

Socrates. — Did you ever know any one very
skilful in determining the merits of Daedalus,
the son of Motion, Epius, the son of Panopus,
Theodorus the Samian, or any other great sculptor,
who was immediately at a loss, and felt sleepy the
moment any other sculptor was mentioned ?

OR, OF THE ILIAD.

281

Ion. — I never met with such a person certainly.

Socrates. — Nor, do I think, that you ever met
with a man professing himself a judge of poetry
and rhapsody, and competent to criticise either
Olympus, Thamyris, Orpheus, or Phemius of Ithaca,
the rhapsodist, who, the moment he came to Ion
the Ephesian, felt himself quite at a loss, and
utterly incompetent to judge whether he rhapso-
dised well or ill.

lox. — I cannot refute you, Socrates, but of this
I am conscious to myself : that I excel all men in
the copiousness and beauty of my illustrations of
Homer, as all who have heard me will confess, and
with respect to other poets, I am deserted of this
power. It is for you to consider what may be the
cause of this distinction.

Socrates. — I will tell you, 0 Ion, what appears
to me to be the cause of this inequality of power.
It is that you are not master of any art for the
illustration of Homer, but it is a divine influence
which moves you, like that which resides in the
stone called magnet by Euripides, and Heraclea
by the people. For not only does this stone pos-
sess the power of attracting iron rings, but it can
communicate to them the power of attracting other
rings ; so that you may see sometimes a long chain
of rings, and other iron substances, attached and

282 ION ;

suspended one to the other by this influence. And
as the power of the stone circulates through all the
links of this series, and attaches each to each, so
the Muse, communicating through those whom she
has first inspired, to all others capable of sharing
in the inspiration, the influence of that first enthu-
siasm, creates a chain and a succession. For the
authors of those great poems which we admire, do
not attain to excellence through the rules of any
art, but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse
in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed
by a spirit not their own. Thus the composers of
lyrical poetry create those admired songs of theirs
in a state of divine insanity, like the Corybantes,
who lose all control over their reason in the enthu-
siasm of the sacred dance ; and, during this super-
natural possession, are excited to the rhythm and
harmony which they communicate to men. Like
the Bacchantes, who, when possessed by the God,
draw honey and milk from the rivers, in which,
when they come to their senses, they find nothing
but simple water. For the souls of the poets, as
poets tell us, have this peculiar ministration in the
world. They tell us that these souls, flying like
bees from flower to flower, and wandering over the
gardens and the meadows, and the honey-flowing
fountains of the Muses, return to us laden with

OR, OF THE ILIAD. 283

the sweetness of melody ; and arrayed as they are
in the plumes of rapid imagination, they speak
truth. For a Poet is indeed a thing etherially light,
winged, and sacred, nor can he compose any thing
worth calling poetry until he becomes inspired,
and, as it were, mad, or whilst any reason remains
in him. For whilst a man retains any portion of
the thing called reason, he is utterly incompetent
to produce poetry or to vaticinate. Thus, those
who declaim various and beautiful poetry upon any
subject, as for instance upon Homer, are not
enabled to do so by art or study ; but every rhap-
sodist or poet, whether dithyrambic, encomiastic,
choral, epic, or iambic, is excellent in proportion to
the extent of his participation in the divine influ-
ence, and the degree in which the Muse itself has
descended on him. In other respects, poets may
be sufficiently ignorant and incapable. For they
do not compose according to any art which they
have acquired, but from the impulse of the divinity
within them ; for did they know any rules of cri-
ticism according to which they could compose
beautiful verses upon one subject, they would be
able to exert the same faculty with respect to all
or any other. The God seems purposely to have
deprived all poets, prophets, and soothsayers of
every particle of reason and understanding, the

284 ION ;

better to adapt them to their employment as his
ministers and interpreters; and that we, their
auditors, may acknowledge that those who write
so beautifully, are possessed, and address us,
inspired by the God. [Tynnicus the Chalcidean,
is a manifest proof of this, for he never before
composed any poem worthy to be remembered ; and
yet, was the author of that Paean which everybody
sings, and which excels almost every other hymn,
and which, he himself, acknowledges to have been
inspired by the Muse. And, thus, it appears to
me, that the God proves beyond a doubt, that
these transcendant poems are not human as the
work of men, but divine as coming from the God.
Poets then are the interpreters of the divinities —
each being possessed by some one deity ; and to
make this apparent, the God designedly inspires the
worst poets with the sublimest verse. Does it
seem to you that I am in the right, O Ion ?

Ion. — Yes, by Jupiter ! My mind is enlightened
by your words, O Socrates, and it appears to me
that great poets interpret to us through some
divine election of the God.

Socrates. — And do not you rhapsodists interpret
poets ?

Ion. — We do.

Socrates. — Thus you interpret the interpreters 2

OR, OF THE ILIAD. 285

Ion. — Evidently.

Socrates. — Remember this, and tell me ; and do
not conceal that which I ask. When you declaim well,
and strike your audience with admiration ; whether
you sing of Ulysses rushing upon the threshold of
his palace, discovering himself to the suitors, and
pouring his shafts out at his feet ; or of Achilles
assailing Hector; or those affecting passages con-
cerning Andromache, or Hecuba, or Priam, are
you then self-possessed? or, rather, are you not
rapt and filled with such enthusiasm by the deeds
you recite, that you fancy yourself in Ithaca or
Troy, or wherever else the poem transports you 1

Ion. — You speak most truly, Socrates, nor will I
deny it ; for, when I recite of sorrow my eyes fill
with tears ; and, when of fearful or terrible deeds,
my hair stands on end, and my heart beats fast.

Socrates.— Tell me. Ion, can we call him in his
senses, who weeps while dressed in splendid gar-
ments, and crowned with a golden coronal, not
losing any of these things ? and is filled with fear
when surrounded by ten thousand friendly persons,
not one among whom desires to despoil or injure
him?

Ion. — To say the truth, we could not.

Socrates. — Do you often perceive your audience
moved also ?

286 ION ;

Ion. — Many among them, and frequently. I,
standing on the rostrum, see them weeping, with
eyes fixed earnestly on me, and overcome by my
declamation. I have need so to agitate them ; for
if they weep, I laugh, taking their money ; If they
should laugh, I must weep, going without It. *

Socrates. — Do you not perceive that your auditor
is the last link of that chain which I have described
as held together through the power of the magnet ?
You rhapsodists and actors are the middle links, of
which the poet is the first — and through all these the
God influences whichever mind he selects, as they con-
duct this power one to the other; and thus, as rings
from the stone, so hangs a long series of chorus-
dancers, teachers, and disciples from the Muse. Some
poets are influenced by one Muse, some by another ;
we call them possessed, and this word really expres-
ses the truth, for they are held. Others, who are
interpreters, are inspired by the first links, the poets,
and are filled with enthusiasm, some by one, some by
another ; some by Orpheus, some by Musseus, but
the greater number are possessed and inspired by
Homer. You, O Ion, are influenced by Homer. If
you recite the works of any other poet, you get
drowsy, and are at a loss what to say ; but when
you hear any of the compositions of that poet you
are roused, your thoughts are excited, and you

OR, OF THE ILIAD. 287

grow eloquent; — for what you say of Homer is
not derived from any art or knowledge, but from
divine inspiration and possession. As the Cory-
bantes feel acutely the melodies of him by whom they
are inspired, and abound with verse and gesture
for his songs alone, and care for no other ; thus, you,
O Ion, are eloquent when you expound Homer,
and are barren of words with regard to every other
poet. And this explains the question you asked,
wherefore Homer, and no other poet, inspires
you with eloquence. It is that you are thus excel-
lent in your praise, not through science but from
divine inspiration.

Ion. — You say the truth, Socrates. Yet, I am
surprised that you should be able to persuade me
that I am possessed and insane when I praise
Homer. I think I shall not appear such to you
when you hear me.

Socrates. — I desire to hear you, but not before
you have answered me this one question. What
subject does Homer treat best ? for, surely, he does
not treat all equally.

Ion. — You are aware that he treats of every
thing.

Socrates. — Does Homer mention subjects on
which you are ignorant ?

IoN» — What can those be ?

288 ION ;

Socrates. — Does not Homer frequently dilate
on various arts — on chariot, driving, for instance ?
if I remember the verses, I will repeat them.

Ion.— I will repeat them, for I remember
them.

Socrates. — Repeat what Nestor says to his son
Antilochus, counselling him to be cautious in
turning, during the chariot race at the funeral
games of Patroclus.

AvTos 8e KXLv6rjvaL evTrAe/crw ivl btcPpio
^Hk €7r' apLCTTepa touv arap rov be^iov tiriTov
K^vcrat opiOKXriaas, ei^at re ol rjvia yjEpcriv.
''EtV vvo-crji 8e rot lttttos apia-Tepos iyxptpicpd-^TOi),
'-12s av TOL irXriixvr] ye bodo-a-eraL CLKpov iK^aOai

¥jukKov TTOirjTo'to' XiOov 6' dX^acrOaL iiravpe'iv.

11. vj/'. 335.*

Socrates. — Enough. Now, O Ion, would a
physician or a charioteer be the better judge as to
Homer's sagacity on this subject ?

Ion. — Of course, a charioteer.

and warily proceed,

A little bending to the left-hand steed ;
But urge the right, and give him all the reins ;
While thy strict hand his fellow's head restrains.
And turns him short ; till, doubling as they roll,
The wheel's round nave appears to brush the goal.
Yet, not to break the car or lame the horse,
Clear of the stony heap direct the course.

Pupe, Book 23.

OR, OF THE ILIAD. 289

Socrates. — Because he understands the art — or
from what other reason ?

Ion. — From his knowledge of the art.

Socrates. — For one science is not gifted with the
power of judging of another— a steersman, for
instance, does not understand medicine 1

Ion. — Without doubt.

Socrates. — Nor a physician, architecture ?

Ion. — Of course not.

Socrates. — Is it not thus with every art ? If we
are adepts in one, we are ignorant of another.
But first, tell me, do not all arts differ one from
the other ?

Ion. — They do.

Socrates. — For you, as well as I, can testify that
when we say an art is the knowledge of one thing,
we do not mean that it is the knowledge of an-
other.

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — For, if each art contained the know-
ledge of all things, why should we call them by differ-
ent names ? we do so that we may distinguish them
one from the other. Thus, you as well as I, know
that these are five fingers ; and if I asked you
whether we both meant the same thing or another,
when we speak of arithmetic — would you not say
the same ?

VOL I. o

290 ION ;

I ox. — Yes.

Socrates. — And tell me, when we learn one
art we must both learn the same things
with regard to it ; and other things if we learn
another ?

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — And he who is not versed in an art,
is not a good judge of what is said or done with
respect to it l

Ion. — Certainly not.

Socrates. — To return to the verses which you
just recited, do you think that you or a charioteer
would be better capable of deciding whether Homer
had spoken rightly or not?

Ion. — Doubtless a charioteer.

Socrates. — For you are a rhapsodist, and not a
charioteer ?

Ion. — Yes.

Socrates. — And the art of reciting verses is dif-
ferent from that of driving chariots ?

Ion, — Certainly.

Socrates. — And if it is different, it supposes a
knowledge of different things ?

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — And when Homer introduces Heca-
mede, the concubine of Nestor, giving Machaon a
posset to drink, and he speaks thus : —

OR, OF THE ILIAD. 291

OlviD Trpa/xre^o), (prja-iV iirl 8' atyeiov Kvrj rvpbv
KvqoTL xa\K€ir]' TTapa 8e Kpoi^iov ttotw oyjrov*.

Jl. \'. 639.

Does it belong to the medical or rhapsodical art,
to determine whether Homer speaks rightly on
this subject ?

Ion. — The medical.

Socrates. — And when he says —

*H 8e ixokv^haivri iK^kr] ks (Svo-abv iKavev^

"H re Kar aypavkoLO ^obs nipas e/u/xe/xavta

"Y^pX^rai wjutr/arr/o-i /xer"* lydvcn irrjixa (fyipova-af.

II. «'. 80.

Does it belong to the rhapsodical or the piscatorial
art, to determine whether he speaks rightly or
not?

Ion. — Manifestly to the piscatorial art.

Socrates. — Consider whether you are not in-
spired to make some such demand as this to me : —
Come, Socrates, since you have found in Homer an

* Tempered in this, the nymph of form divine,
Pours a large portion of the Pramnian wine ;
With goats'-milk cheese, a flavorous taste bestows,
And last with flour the smiling surface strews.

Pope, Book 11.

+ She plunged, and instant shot the dark profound :
As, hearing death in the fallacious bait,
From the bent angle sinks the leaden weight.

Pope, Book 24.
O 2

292 ION ;

accurate description of these arts, assist me also in
the inquiry as to his competence on the subject of
soothsayers and divination ; and how far he speaks
well or ill on such subjects ; for he often treats of
them in the Odyssey, and especially when he intro-
duces Theoclymenus the Soothsayer of the Me-
lampians, prophesying to the Suitors : —

Aat/xoyi, Ti KaKov rohe uAayjET^ ; vvktI jxev v[j,€0)v

EtAi;arat K€(paXaL re TTpoorooTrd re vepde re yvia,

Oi/xcoy^ 8e 8e'5?ye, hehcLKpvvTai he TTapetai.

Elhcokcov re irkiov irpoOvpov, TrAet'r/ 8e kol av\r}

'le/LteVcor e/)e/3o98e virb (6(j)ov' r)eAios 5e

Ovpavov e^aTToAwAe, KaKrj 6' eirbibpopiev axkv^-*.

Odyss. V. 351.

Often too in the Iliad, as at the battle at the walls ;

for he there says —

"OpvLS yap (r<pLV eTrrjkOe Trep-qcreiJLevaL pLepLauxriv,
Aieros v\lnTT€Tris, evr' apta-Tepa Kabv iepycov,
(i>OLVi^evTa bpoLKOvTa (pepcov ovvyjEcrcn iriXoipov,

* O race to death devote ! with Stygian shade
Each destined peer impending Fates invade ;
With tears your wan distorted cheeks are drowned,
With sanguine drops the walls are rubied round ;
Thick swarms the spacious hall with howling ghosts,
To people Orcus, and the burning coasts.
Nor gives the sun his golden orb to roll,
But universal night usurps the pole.

Pope, Book 20.

OR, OF THE ILIAD. 293

Zoobv, €T acnraipovra' koI ovttco krjdeTO xdpixrjs.
K6\(/€ yap avTov expvra Kara (tt7J6os Trapa bcLprjv,

^lbvOo6€ls OTTLaO). 6 b' OLTTO eOcV ^K€ X«M«C<^

"'AXyrja-as obyvrjaL^ fx^acob^ €yKa^^a)C 6fXL\(f'

AvTos 8e Kkdy^as €TT€to ttvol^s avifxoio*.

II. /.

I assert, it belongs to a soothsayer both to observe
and to judge respectmg such appearances as these.

Ion. — And you assert the truth, O Socrates.

Socrates. — And you also, my dear Ion. For we
have in our turn recited from the Odyssey and the
Iliad, passages relating to vaticination, to medicine
and the piscatorial art ; and as you are more
skilled in Homer than I can be, do you now make
mention of whatever relates to the rhapsodist and
his art ; for a rhapsodist is competent above all
other men to consider and pronounce on whatever
has relation to his art.

* A signal omen stopped the passing host,
Their martial ftiry in their wonder lost.
Jove's bird on sounding pinions beats the skies ;
A bleeding serpent of enormous size
His talons trussed, alive and curling round,
He stung the bird, whose tliroat received the wound;
Mad with the smart, he drops the fiital prey,
In airy circles wings his painful way,
Floats on the winds and rends the heaven with cries ;
Amidst the host the fallen serpent lies.

Pope^ Book 12.

294 ION ;

Ion. — Or with respect to everything else men-
tioned by Homer.

Socrates. — Do not be so forgetful as to say
everything. A good memory is particularly neces-
sary for a rhapsodist.

Ion. — And what do I forget ?

Socrates. — Do you not remember that you ad-
mitted the art of reciting verses was different from
that of driving chariots ?

Ion. — I remember.

Socrates. — And did you not admit that being
different, the subjects of its knowledge must also
be different I

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — You will not assert that the art of
rhapsody is that of universal knowledge ; a rhap-
sodist may be ignorant of some things.

Ion. — Except perhaps, such things as we now
discuss, O Socrates.

Socrates. — What do you mean by such subjects,
besides those which relate to other arts ? And with
which among them do you profess a competent ac-
quaintance, since not with all I

Ion. — I imagine that the rhapsodist has a perfect
knowledge of what it is becoming for a man to
speak — what for a woman ; what for a slave, what
for a free man ; what for the ruler, what for him
who is governed.

OR, OF THE ILIAD. 295

Socrates. — How! do you think that a rhapso-
dist knows better than a pilot what the captain of
a ship in a tempest ought to say ?

Ion. — In such a circumstance I allow that the
pilot would know best.

Socrates. — Has the rhapsodist or the physician
the clearest knowledge of what ought to be said to
a sick man ?

Ion. — In that case the physician.

Socrates. — But you assert that he knows what
a slave ought to say 1

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — To take for example, in the driving
of cattle ; a rhapsodist would know much better
than the herdsman what ought to be said to a slave
engaged in bringing back a herd of oxen run wild I

Ion. — No, indeed.

[Socrates. — But what a woman should say con-
cerning spinning wool ?

Ion. — Of course not.

Socrates. — He would know, however, what a
man, who is a general, should say when exhorting
his troops ?

Ion. — Yes ; a rhapsodist would know that.

Socrates. — How ! is rhapsody and strategy the
same art ?

Ion. — I know what it is fitting for a general to

296 ION ;

Socrates. — Probably because you are learned in
war, O Ion. For if you are equally expert in horse-
manship and playing on the harp, you would know
whether a man rode well or ill. But if I should
ask you which understands riding best, a horseman
or a harper, what would you answer ?

Ion. — A horseman, of course.

Socrates. — And if you knew a good player on
the harp, you would in the same way say that he
understood harp-playing and not riding 2

Ion. — Certainly.

Socrates. — Since you understand strategy, you
can tell me which is the most excellent, the art of
war or rhapsody ?

Ion. — One does not appear to me to excel the
other.

Socrates. — One is not better than the other, say
you l Do you say that tactics and rhapsody are
two arts or one ?

Ion. — They appear to me to be the same.

Socrates. — Then a good rhapsodist is also a good
general.

Ion. — Of course.

Socrates. — And a good general is a good rhap-
sodist ?

Ion. — I do not say that.

Socrates. — You said that a good rhapsodist was
also a good general.

OR, OF THE ILIAD. 297

Ion — I did.

Socrates. — Are you not the best rhapsodist in
Greece ?

Ion. — By far, O Socrates.

Socrates. — And you are also the most excellent
general among the Greeks ?

Ion. — I am. I learned the art from Homer.

Socrates. — How is it then, by Jupiter, that
being both the best general and the best rhapso-
dist among us, that you continually go about
Greece rhapsodising, and never lead our armies ?
Does it seem to you that the Greeks greatly
need golden-crowned rhapsodists, and have no want
of generals ?

Ion. — My native town, O Socrates, is ruled by
yours, and requires no general for her wars; — and
neither will your city nor the Lacedemonians elect
me to lead their armies — you think your own
generals sufficient.

Socrates. — My good Ion, are you acquainted
with Apollodorus the Cyzicenian?

Ion. — Who do you mean 1

Socrates. — He whom, though a stranger, the
Athenians often elected general ; and Phanosthenes
the Andrian, and Heraclides the Clazomenian, all
foreigners, but whom this city has chosen, as being
great men, to lead its armies, and to fill other high
o 3

298 ION ; OR, OP the iliad.

offices. Would not, therefore, Ion the Ephesian
be elected and honoured if he were esteemed
capable ? Were not the Ephesians originally from
Athens, and is Ephesus the least of cities ? But
if you spoke true. Ion, and praise Homer accord-
ing to art and knowledge, you have deceived me, —
sinfte you declared that you were learned on the
subject of Homer, and would communicate your
knowledge to me — but you have disappointed me,
and are far from keeping your word. For you will
not explain in what you are so excessively clever,
though I greatly desire to learn; but, as various as
Proteus, you change from one thing to another,
and to escape at last, you disappear in the form of a
general, without disclosing your Homeric wisdom.
If therefore, you possess the learning which you
promised to expound on the subject of Homer, you
deceive me and are false. But if you are eloquent
on the subject of this Poet, not through knowledge,
but by inspiration, being possessed by him, ignorant
the while of the wisdom and beauty you display,
then I allow that you are no deceiver. Choose then
whether you will be considered false or inspired I

Ion. — It is far better, O Socrates, to be thought
inspired.

Socrates. — It is better both for you and for us,
O Ion, to say that you are the inspired, and not the
learned, eulogist of Homer.

MENEXENUS,

OR

THE FUNERAL ORATION.
SI iFragwent.

Socrates and Menexenus.

Socrates. — Whence comest thou, 0 Menexenus I
from the forum ?

Menexenus. — Even so ; and from the senate-
house.

Socrates. — What was thy business with the
senate? Art thou persuaded that thou hast
attained to that perfection of discipHne and philo-
sophy, from which thou may est aspire to under-
take greater matters? Wouldst thou, at thine
age, my wonderful friend, assume to thyself the
government of us who are thine elders, lest thy
family should at any time fail in affording us a pro-
jector ?

Menexenus. — Thou, 0 Socrates, shouldst permit
and counsel me to enter into public life. I would

300

MENEXENUS :

earnestly endeavour to fit myself for the attempt.
If otherwise, I would abstain. On the present
occasion, I went to the senate-house, merely from
having heard that the senate was about to elect
one to speak concerning those who are dead. Thou
knowest that the celebration of their funeral ap-
proaches ?

Socrates. — Assuredly. But whom have they
chosen ?

Menexenus. — The election is deferred until to-
morrow ; I imagine that either Dion or Archinus
will be chosen.

Socrates. — In truth, Menexenus, the condition
of him who dies in battle is, in every respect, fortu-
nate and glorious. If he is poor, he is conducted
to his tomb with a magnificent and honourable
funeral, amidst the praises of all ; if even he were a
coward, his name is included in a panegyric pro-
nounced by the most learned men ; from which all
the vulgar expressions, which unpremeditated com-
position might admit, have been excluded by the
careful labour of leisure ; who praise so admirably,
enlarging upon every topic remotely, or immediately
connected with the subject, and blending so elo-
quent a variety of expressions, that, praising in
every manner the state of which we are citizens,
and those who have perished in battle, and the

OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION. 301

ancestors who preceded our generation, and our-
selves who yet hve, they steal away our spirits
as with enchantment. Whilst I listen to their
praises, 0 Menexenus, I am penetrated with a very
lofty conception of myself, and overcome by their
flatteries. I appear to myself immeasurably more
honourable and generous than before, and many of
the strangers who are accustomed to accompany
me, regard me with additional veneration, after
having heard these relations ; they seem to consider
the whole state, including me, much more worthy
of admiration, after they have been soothed into
persuasion by the orator. The opinion thus in-
spired of my own majesty will last me more than
three days sometimes, and the penetrating melody
of the words descends through the ears into the
mind, and clings to it ; so that it is often three or
four days before I come to my senses sufficiently to
perceive in what part of the world I am, or suc-
ceed in persuading myself that I do not inhabit one
of the islands of the blessed. So skilful are these
orators of ours.

Menexenus. — Thou always laughest at the orators,
0 Socrates. On the present occasion, however, the
unforeseen election will preclude the person chosen
from the advantages of a preconcerted speech ; the
speaker will probably be reduced to the necessity
of extemporising.

302 MENEXENUS ;

Socrates. — How so, my good friend? Every
one of the candidates has, without doubt, his
oration prepared ; and if not, there were little
difficulty, on this occasion, of inventing an unpre-
meditated speech. If, indeed, the question were
of Athenians, who should speak in the Peloponne-
sus; or of Peloponnesians, who should speak at
Athens, an orator who would persuade and be
applauded, must employ all the resources of his skill.
But to the orator who contends for the approbation
of those whom he praises, success will be little
difficult.

Menexenus. — Is that thy opinion, O Socrates ?

Socrates. — In truth it is.

Menexenus. — Shouldst thou consider thyself
competent to pronounce this oration, if thou shouldst
be chosen by the senate ?

Socrates. — There would be nothing astonishing
if I should consider myself equal to such an under-
taking. My mistress in oratory was perfect in
the science which she taught, and had formed
many other excellent orators, and one of the most
eminent among the Greeks, Pericles, the son of
Xantippus.

Menexenus. — Who is she? Assuredly thou
meanest Aspasia.

Socrates. — Aspasia, and Connus the son of

OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION. 303

Metrobius, the two instructors. From the former
of these I learned rhetoric, and from the latter
music. There would be nothing wonderful if a
man so educated should be capable of great
energy of speech. A person who should have
been instructed in a manner totally different from
me; who should have learned rhetoric from Antiphon
the son of Rhamnusius, and music from Lampses,
would be competent to succeed in such an attempt
as praising the Athenians to the Athenians.

Menexenus. — And what shouldst thou have to
say, if thou wert chosen to pronounce the oration 1

Socrates. — Of my own, probably nothing. But
yesterday I heard Aspasia declaim a funeral oration
over these same persons. She had heard, as thou
sayest, that the Athenians were about to choose
an orator, and she took the occasion of suggesting
a series of topics proper for such an orator to
select ; in part extemporaneously, and in part such
as she had already prepared. I think it probable
that she composed the oration by interweaving such
fragments of oratory as Pericles might have left.

Menexenus. — Rememberest thou what Aspasia

Socrates. — Unless I am greatly mistaken. I
learned it from her; and she is so good a school-
mistress, that I should have been beaten if I had
not been perfect in my lesson.

304 MENEXENUS ; OR, THE FUNERAL ORATION.

Menexenus — Why not repeat it to me?

Socrates. — I fear lest my mistress be angry,
should I publish her discourse.

Menexenus. — O, fear not. At least deliver a
discourse; you will do what is exceedingly dehghtful
to me, whether it be of Aspasia or any other. I
entreat you to do me this pleasure.

Socrates. — But you will laugh at me, who, being
old, attempt to repeat a pleasant discourse.

Menexenus. — O no, Socrates; I entreat you to
speak, however it may be.

Socrates. — I see that I must do what you require.
In a little while, if you should ask me to strip naked
and dance, I shall be unable to refuse you, at least,
if we are alone. Now, listen. She spoke thus, if I
recollect, beginning with the dead, in whose honour
the oration is supposed to have been delivered.

FRAGMENTS

FROM THE REPUBLIC OP PLATO.

I. But it would be almost impossible to build
your city in such a situation that it would need no
imposts. — Impossible. — Other persons would then
be required, who might undertake to conduct from
another city those things of which they stood in
need. — Certainly. — But the merchant who should
return to his own city, without any of those
articles which it needed, would return empty-
handed. It will be necessary, therefore, not only
to produce a sufficient supply, but such articles,
both in quantity and in kind, as may be required to
remunerate those who conduct the imports. There
will be needed then more husbandmen, and other
artificers, in our city. There will be needed also
other persons who will undertake the conveyance
of the imports and the exports, and these persons
are called merchants. If the commerce which
these necessities produce is carried on by sea,

306 FRAGMENTS FROM

other persons will be required who are accustomed
to nautical affairs. And, in the city itself, how
shall the products of each man's labour be trans-
ported from one to another; those products, for the
sake of the enjoyment and the ready distribution
of which, they were first induced to institute a civil
society ? — By selling and buying, surely.— A market
and money, as a symbol of exchange, arises out of
this necessity.— Evidently. — When the husband-
man, or any other artificer, brings the produce of
his labours to the public place, and those who desire
to barter their produce for it do not happen to
arrive exactly at the same time, would he not lose
his time, and the profit of it, if he were to sit in
the market waiting for them ? Assuredly. But,
there are persons, who, perceiving this, will take
upon themselves the arrangement between the
buyer and the seller. In constituted civil societies,
those who are employed on this service, ought to
be the infirm, and unable to perform any other ;
but, exchanging on one hand for money, what any
person comes to sell, and giving the articles thus
bought for a similar equivalent to those who might
wish to buy.

II. — Description of a frugal enjoyment of the
goods of the world.

THE REPUBLIC OP PLATO. S07

HI. — But with this system of Hfe some are not
contented. They must have beds and tables, and
other furniture. They must have scarce ointments
and perfumes, women, and a thousand super-
fluities of the same character. The things which
we mentioned as sufficient, houses, and clothes, and
food, are not enough. Painting and mosaic-work
must be cultivated, and works in gold and ivory.
The society must be enlarged in consequence. This
city, which is of a healthy proportion, will not
suffice, but it must be replenished with a multitude
of persons, whose occupations are by no means
indispensable. Huntsmen and mimics, persons
whose occupation it is to arrange forms and
colours, persons whose trade is the cultivation of
the more delicate arts, poets and their ministers,
rhapsodists, actors, dancers, manufacturers of all
kinds of instruments and schemes of female dress,
and an immense crowd of other ministers to
pleasure and necessity. Do you not think we should
want schoolmasters, tutors, nurses, hair- dressers,
barbers, manufacturers and cooks ? Should we
not want pig-drivers, which were not wanted in our
more modest city, in this one, and a multitude of
others to administer to other animals, which would
then become necessary articles of food, — or should
we not? — Certainly we should. — Should we not

308 FRAGMENTS FROM

want physicians much more, living in this manner
than before ? The same tract of country would no
longer provide sustenance for the state. Must we
then not usurp from the territory of our neighbours,
and then we should make aggressions, and so we
have discovered the origin of war ; which is the
principal cause of the greatest public and private
calamities. — C. xi.

IV. — And first, we must improve upon the com-
posers of fabulous histories in verse, to compose
them according to the rules of moral beauty ; and
those not composed according to the rules must be
rejected ; and we must persuade mothers and
nurses to teach those which we approve to their
children, and to form their minds by moral fables,
far more than their bodies by their hands. — Lib. ii.

V. — ON THE DANGER OF THE STUDY OF ALLEGORICAL
COMPOSITION (in a LARGE SENSe) FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.

For a young person is not competent to judge
what portions of a fabulous composition are alle-
gorical and what literal ; but the opinions produced
by a literal acceptation of that which has no mean-
ing, or a bad one, except in an allegorical sense,
are often irradicable. — Lib. ii.

THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. 309

VI. — God then, since he is good, cannot be, as
is vulgarly supposed, the cause of all things ;
he is the cause, indeed, of very few things.
Among the great variety of events which happen
in the course of human affairs, evil prodigiously
overbalances good in everything which regards
men. Of all that is good there can be no other
cause than God ; but some other cause ought to be
discovered for evil, which should never be imputed
as an effect to God. — L. ii.

VII. — Plato's doctrine of punishment as laid
down, p. 146, is refuted by his previous reason-
ings.— P. 26.

VIII. THE UNCHANGEABLE NATURE OF GOD.

Do you think that God is like a vulgar con-
juror, and that he is capable for the sake of effect,
of assuming, at one time, one form, and at another
time, another ? Now, in his own character, con-
verting his proper form into a multitude of shapes,
now deceiving us, and offering vain images of him-
self to our imagination I Or do you think that
God is single and one, and least of all things capa-
ble of departing from his permanent nature and
appearance ?

810 FRAGMENTS FROM

IX. THE PERMANENCY OF WHAT IS EXCELLENT.

But everything, in proportion as it is excellent,
either in art or nature, or in both, is least suscep-
tible of receiving change from any external influ-
ence.

X. AGAINST SUPERSTITIOUS TALES.

Nor should mothers terrify their children by
these fables, that Gods go about in the night-time,
resembling strangers, in all sorts of forms : at once
blaspheming the Gods and rendering their children
cowardly.

XI. THE TRUE ESSENCE OF FALSEHOOD AND ITS ORIGIN.

Know you not that, that which is truly false,
if it may be permitted me so to speak, all, both
gods and men detest? — How do you mean ? — Thus:
No person is willing to falsify in matters of the
highest concern to himself concerning those matters,
but fears, above all things, lest he should accept
falsehood. — Yet, I understand you not. — You think
that I mean something profound. I say that no
person is willing in his own mind to receive or to
assert a falsehood, to be ignorant, to be in error,
to possess that which is not true. This is
truly to be called falsehood, this ignorance and

THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. 311

error in the mind itself. What is usually called
falsehood, or deceit in words, is but a voluntary
imitation of what the mind itself suffers in the invo-
luntary possession of that falsehood, an image of
later birth, and scarcely, in a strict and complete
sense, deserving the name of falsehood. — Lib. ii.

XJI. AGAINST A BELIEF IN HELL.

If they are to possess courage, are not those
doctrines alone to be taught, which render death
least terrible ? Or do you conceive that any man
can be brave who is subjected to a fear of death ?
that he who believes the things that are related of
hell, and thinks that they are truth, will prefer in
battle, death to slavery, or defeat? — Lib. iii. —
Then follows a criticism on the poetical accounts of hell,

XIII. ON GRIEF.

We must then abolish the custom of lamenting
and commiserating the deaths of illustrious men.
Do we assert that an excellent man will consider
it anything dreadful that his intimate friend, who
is also an excellent man, should die ? — By no means.
(an excessive refinement). He will abstain then from
lamenting over his loss, as if he had suffered some
great evil? — Surely. — May we not assert in addi-
tion, that such a person as we have described suf-

312 FRAGMENTS FROM

fices to himself for all purposes of living well and
happily, and in no manner needs the assistance or
society of another ? that he would endure with
resignation the destitution of a son, or a brother,
or possessions, or whatever external adjuncts of
life might have been attached to him ? and that,
on the occurrence of such contingencies, he would
support them with moderation and mildness, by no
means bursting into lamentations, or resigning him-
self to despondence ? — Lib. iii.

Then he proceeds to allege passages of the poets in
which opposite examples were held up to approbation
and imitation.

XIV. THE INFLUENCE OF EARLY CONSTANT IMITATION.

Do you not apprehend that imitations, if they
shall have been practised and persevered in from
early youth, become established in the habits and
nature, in the gestures of the body, and the tones
of the voice, and lastly, in the intellect itself? —
C. iii.

XV. — ON THE EFFECT OF BAD TASTE IN ART.

Nor must we restrict the poets alone to an exhi-
bition of the example of virtuous manners in their
compositions, but all other artists must be for-

THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. 313

bidden, either in sculpture, or painting, or architec-
ture, to employ their skill upon forms of an immo-
ral, unchastened, monstrous, or illiberal type, either
in the forms of living beings, or in architectural
arrangements. And the artist capable of this em-
ployment of his art, must not be suffered in our
community, lest those destined to be guardians of
the society, nourished upon images of deformity
and vice, like cattle upon bad grass, gradually
gathering and depasturing every day a little, may
ignorantly establish one great evil composed of
these many evil things, in their minds. — C. iii.

The monstrous figures called Arabesques^ however
in some of them is to be found a mixture of a truer
and simpler taste, which are found in the ruined
palaces of the Roman Emperors, bear, nevertheless,
the same relation to the brutal profligacy and killing
luxury ivhich required them, as the majestic figures of
Castor and Pollux, and the simple beauty of the
sculpture of the frieze of the Parthenon, bear to the
more beautiful and simple manners of the Greeks of
that period. With a liberal interpretation, a similar
analogy might be extended into literary composition.

XVI. AGAINST THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS.

What better evidence can you require of a cor-
rupt and pernicious system of discipline in a state,

VOL. I. p

314

FRAGMENTS FROM

than that not merely persons of base habits and
plebeian employments, but men who pretend to
have received a liberal education, require the assist-
ance of lawyers and physicians, and those too who
have attained to a singular degree (so desperate
are these diseases of body and mind) of skill. Do
you not consider it an abject necessity, a proof of
the deepest degradation, to need to be instructed
in what is just or what is needful, as by a master
and a judge, with regard to your personal know-
ledge and suffering ?

Wliat would Plato have said to a priest^ such as his
office is, in modern times ? — C. iii.

XVII. ON MEDICINE.

Do you not think it an abject thing to require
the assistance of the medicinal art, not for the cure
of wounds, or such external diseases as result from
the accidents of the seasons {eTTrjTenjv), but on account
of sloth and the superfluous indulgences which we
have already condemned ; this being filled with wind
and water, like holes in earth, and compeUing the ele-
gant successors of ^sculapius to invent new names,
flatulences, and catarrhs, &c., for the new diseases
which are the progeny of your luxury and sloth ?
— L. iii.

THE REPUBLIC OP PLATO. SI 5

XVIIl. THE EFFECT OP THE DIETETIC SYSTEM.

Herodicus being psedotribe (TraiSorpi'/S/??, Magister
palcestrcB), and his health becoming weak, united
the gymnastic with the medical art, and having
condemned himself to a life of weariness, after-
wards extended the same pernicious system to
others. He made his life a long death. For
humouring the disease, mortal in its own nature,
to which he was subject, without being able to
cure it, he postponed all other purposes to the
care of medicating himself, and through his whole
life was subject to an access of his malady, if he
departed in any degree from his accustomed diet,
and by the employment of this skill, dying by
degrees, he arrived at an old age. — L. iii.

iEsculapius never pursued these systems, nor
Machaon or Podalirius. They never undertook the
treatment of those whose frames were inwardly
and thoroughly diseased, so to prolong a worthless
existence, and bestow on a man a long and
wretched being, during which they might gene-
rate children in every respect the inheritors of
their infirmity. — L. iii.

p 2

316

FRAGMENTS FROM

XIX. AGAINST WHAT IS FALSELY CALLED KNOW-

LEDGE OF THE WORLD."

A man ought not to be a good judge until he
be old ; because he ought not have acquired a
knowledge of what injustice is, until his under-
standing has arrived at maturity : not apprehend-
ing its nature from a consideration of its existence
in himself; but having contemplated it distinct
from his own nature in that of others, for a long
time, until he shall perceive what an evil it is, not
from his own experience and its effects within
himself, but from his observations of them as
resulting in others. Such a one were indeed an
honourable judge, and a good ; for he who has a
good mind, is good. But that judge who is con-
sidered so wise, who having himself committed
great injustices, is supposed to be qualified for the
detection of it in others, and who is quick to sus-
pect, appears keen, indeed, as long as he associates
with those who resemble him; because, deriving
experience from the example afforded by a consi-
deration of his own conduct and character, he acts
with caution ; but when he associates with men of
universal experience and real virtue, he exposes
the defects resulting from such experience as he
possesses, by distrusting men unreasonably and mis-

THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. 317

taking true virtue, having no example of it within
himself with which to compare the appearances
manifested in others : yet, such a one finding more
associates who are virtuous than such as are wise,
necessarily appears, both to himself and others,
rather to be wise than foolish. — But we ought
rather to search for a wise and good judge ; one
who has examples within himself of that upon which
he is to pronounce. — C. iii.

XX. — Those who use gymnastics unmingled with
music become too savage, whilst those who use music
unmingled with gymnastics, become more delicate
than is befitting.

ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO.

[It is well known that when Socrates was condemned to death, his
friends made arrangements for his escape from prison and his after
security; of which he refused to avail himself, from the reason, that a
good citizen ought to obey the laws of his country. On this Shelley
makes the following remarks — ]

The reply is simple,

Indeed, your city cannot subsist, because the
laws are no longer of avail. For how can the laws
be said to exist, when those who deserve to be
nourished in the Prytanea at the public expense,
are condemned to suffer the penalties only due to
the most atrocious criminals ; whilst those against,
and to protect from whose injustice, the laws
were framed, live in honour and security? I
neither overthrow your state, nor infringe your
laws. Although you have inflicted an injustice on
me, which is sufficient, according to the opinions of
the multitude, to authorise me to consider you and
me as in a state of warfare ; yet, had I the power,

ON A PASSAGE IN CRITO. 819

SO far from inflicting any revenge, I would endea-
vour to overcome you by benefits. All that I do
at present is, that which the peaceful traveller
would do, who, caught by robbers in a forest,
escapes from them whilst they are engaged in the
division of the spoil. And this I do, when it would
not only be indifferent, but delightful to me to die,
surrounded by my friends, secure of the inheritance
of glory, and escaping, after such a life as mine,
from the decay of mind and body which must soon
begin to be my portion should I live. But, I prefer
the good, which I have it in my power yet to
perform.

Such are the arguments, which overturn the
sophism placed in the mouth of Socrates by Plato.
But there are others which prove that he did well
to die.

END OF VOL.

LONDON:

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRI ARS.

^/