Now the use of the wing is to rise and carry the downward element into
the upper world–there to behold beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the other
things of God by which the soul is nourished. On a certain day Zeus the
lord of heaven goes forth in a winged chariot; and an array of gods
and demi-gods and of human souls in their train, follows him. There are
glorious and blessed sights in the interior of heaven, and he who will
may freely behold them. The great vision of all is seen at the feast of
the gods, when they ascend the heights of the empyrean–all but Hestia,
who is left at home to keep house. The chariots of the gods glide
readily upwards and stand upon the outside; the revolution of the
spheres carries them round, and they have a vision of the world beyond.
But the others labour in vain; for the mortal steed, if he has not been
properly trained, keeps them down and sinks them towards the earth. Of
the world which is beyond the heavens, who can tell? There is an essence
formless, colourless, intangible, perceived by the mind only, dwelling
in the region of true knowledge. The divine mind in her revolution
enjoys this fair prospect, and beholds justice, temperance, and
knowledge in their everlasting essence. When fulfilled with the sight
of them she returns home, and the charioteer puts up the horses in their
stable, and gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. This is the
life of the gods; the human soul tries to reach the same heights, but
hardly succeeds; and sometimes the head of the charioteer rises above,
and sometimes sinks below, the fair vision, and he is at last obliged,
after much contention, to turn away and leave the plain of truth. But if
the soul has followed in the train of her god and once beheld truth she
is preserved from harm, and is carried round in the next revolution of
the spheres; and if always following, and always seeing the truth, is
then for ever unharmed. If, however, she drops her wings and falls to
the earth, then she takes the form of man, and the soul which has seen
most of the truth passes into a philosopher or lover; that which has
seen truth in the second degree, into a king or warrior; the third, into
a householder or money-maker; the fourth, into a gymnast; the fifth,
into a prophet or mystic; the sixth, into a poet or imitator; the
seventh, into a husbandman or craftsman; the eighth, into a sophist or
demagogue; the ninth, into a tyrant. All these are states of probation,
wherein he who lives righteously is improved, and he who lives
unrighteously deteriorates. After death comes the judgment; the bad
depart to houses of correction under the earth, the good to places
of joy in heaven. When a thousand years have elapsed the souls meet
together and choose the lives which they will lead for another period of
existence. The soul which three times in succession has chosen the life
of a philosopher or of a lover who is not without philosophy receives
her wings at the close of the third millennium; the remainder have to
complete a cycle of ten thousand years before their wings are restored
to them. Each time there is full liberty of choice. The soul of a man
may descend into a beast, and return again into the form of man. But the
form of man will only be taken by the soul which has once seen truth and
acquired some conception of the universal:–this is the recollection of
the knowledge which she attained when in the company of the Gods. And
men in general recall only with difficulty the things of another world,
but the mind of the philosopher has a better remembrance of them. For
when he beholds the visible beauty of earth his enraptured soul passes
in thought to those glorious sights of justice and wisdom and temperance
and truth which she once gazed upon in heaven. Then she celebrated holy
mysteries and beheld blessed apparitions shining in pure light, herself
pure, and not as yet entombed in the body. And still, like a bird eager
to quit its cage, she flutters and looks upwards, and is therefore
deemed mad. Such a recollection of past days she receives through sight,
the keenest of our senses, because beauty, alone of the ideas, has any
representation on earth: wisdom is invisible to mortal eyes. But the
corrupted nature, blindly excited by this vision of beauty, rushes on
to enjoy, and would fain wallow like a brute beast in sensual pleasures.
Whereas the true mystic, who has seen the many sights of bliss, when he
beholds a god-like form or face is amazed with delight, and if he were
not afraid of being thought mad he would fall down and worship. Then
the stiffened wing begins to relax and grow again; desire which has
been imprisoned pours over the soul of the lover; the germ of the wing
unfolds, and stings, and pangs of birth, like the cutting of teeth, are
everywhere felt. (Compare Symp.) Father and mother, and goods and laws
and proprieties are nothing to him; his beloved is his physician, who
can alone cure his pain. An apocryphal sacred writer says that the power
which thus works in him is by mortals called love, but the immortals
call him dove, or the winged one, in order to represent the force of
his wings–such at any rate is his nature. Now the characters of lovers
depend upon the god whom they followed in the other world; and they
choose their loves in this world accordingly. The followers of Ares
are fierce and violent; those of Zeus seek out some philosophical and
imperial nature; the attendants of Here find a royal love; and in like
manner the followers of every god seek a love who is like their god; and
to him they communicate the nature which they have received from their
god. The manner in which they take their love is as follows:–