Poetry once recognised as art could never more claim the infallibility of inspiration, since it acknowledged an authority intermediate between itself and the divine original which philosophy had equal or perhaps more powerful means of interpreting. The transition from one to the other was gradual; yet the change was not unfelt, and philosophy at its outset appeared under many disadvantages. It had an austere and repulsive aspect. It was hard to discuss as problems what had hitherto been assumed by the imagination and feelings. The style of philosophy was comparatively homely and unattractive, and it seemed as if by some spell the magic landscape of romance had suddenly broken up, leaving the disconsolate pilgrim on a barren heath or solitary desert. For though the "xoyos" at first imitated the latitude of the "uubos," and even borrowed its imagery, yet the self-conviction of ignorance which was the indispensable preliminary to philosophy, and the kind of spiritual midwifery employed by Socrates to rouse each individual mind to the development of its own embryo ideas, were processes more effectual perhaps but far more painful than the other, often disgusting the patient and bringing ill-will upon the operators. Nay, the activity of mind and conscience which Socrates endeavoured to create in his auditors, by seeking in the forum, the workshop, and every scene of life, occasions of developing images and portraitures of the good and true (ayarμar' ägeтns), is described as almost intolerable even to those able and willing to receive its influences", an irritation like that produced by the fangs of the viper, a subtle poison overmastering the mind by a charm which tortured while it fascinated. The spirit of Nature had often shown its reluctance to disclose its oracles, by changing to a lion or dragon, a fire or flood. So, too, the regeneration of philosophy, as well as the drama of initiation, had its doubts and difficulties, its spectres and gorgons. It was jocularly said that Socrates resembled the wooden figures of Satyrs and Sileni in the sculp

Plato, Apol. ix. p. 23.

Ο «Νέου ψυχής μη αφυούς όταν λαβωνται.” Sympos. 218.

tors' shops, which when cleaved asunder were found to contain within them the images of the gods". Such is the nature of the impression which the aspect of philosophy makes, when for the first time presented to the dormant faculty of reason; it is not every one who is able to penetrate its real meaning, or to discover beneath an unprepossessing exterior the divinity within. Socrates appeared to be always talking of brass founders, leather cutters, or skin dressers, and a dull or unobservant person might have ridiculed his discourse. "But if any one should see it opened, as it were, and should get within the sense of his words, he then found that of all that ever entered into the mind of man to utter, these were the most impressive and profound; so supremely beautiful, so golden, so divine", that there was no resisting what Socrates enjoined." Yet human wisdom must always be limited and incorrect, and even right opinion, in the judgment of this wisest of mankind, is only a something intermediate between ignorance and knowledge12. The normal condition of man is that of progress; philosophy is a kind of journey, it is undoubtedly "ever learning, yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth 13. Rightly therefore did the sage assume the modest title of a "lover of wisdom;" for he ever longs after something more excellent than he possesses, something still beyond his reach, which he desires to make eternally his own". It was thus that the philosophic sentiment came to be associated with the poetical and the religious, under the comprehensive name of Love. The same intense enthusiasm which the poet felt for the beautiful inspired the philosopher in the search after the true. Antecedent to the birth of philosophy Love had received but scanty and inadequate homage. This mightiest and most ancient of gods, coeval with the existence of religion and of the world, had been indeed unconsciously felt, but had neither been worthily honoured, nor directly

10 Plato, Symp. s. 39. (p. 452.)

" Plato, ib. 456. Comp. John vii. 46. 13 See 2 Tim. iii. 7.

12 Symp. 427.

14 Comp. Rep. v. 476d.

15

celebrated in hymn or pæan. And in some respects justly, for in the old days of ignorance Love could scarcely be said to have existed, or at least could not have been recognised. It was a sentiment denounced as a consuming fire 16, a disease, or frenzy, whose only cure was the Leucadian rock", an overpowering dæmon who instigated the tragedies of Tereus and Procne, of Hippolytus and Helen, the many dark events of Greek story in which the combinations of Nature were confounded with the most criminal aberrations of man 18. It was a cosmogonical principle endowed with the ambiguous aspect of the Naturegod, symbolized by the Palladium or Caduceus 19, the cestus of Aphrodite, or bond of universal harmony, yet at the same time the fatal necklace of Eriphyle or belt of the Amazon, the Eris, whose amour, theoretically represented as a crime, was portentous of havoc and war, or, like the pernicious but beautiful Helena, united the antitheses in one as betokening a marriage with the grave". This coarseness was at length theoretically 15 Plato, Sympos. 378. 380. (177, 178.)

16 Xenoph. Cyr. v. 1. 12; vi. 1. 36, 37. Sympos. 195.

17 A murderous expiatory ceremony performed at the festival of the Leucadian Apollo, resembling the Attic Thargelia. The disastrous Tarpeia who betrayed the Roman citadel, but who nevertheless received a yearly worship (Dionys. Hal. ii. 40, p. 321), was probably a local Hecate or Erinnys, and hence victims and eventually criminals were hurled from her rock. (Comp. 2 Chron. xxv. 12. Luke iv. 29.) 18 The sentiment of love was first made a prominent subject of tragic interest by Euripides. Sophocles uses it but little, and Eschylus only in mythic allusions. 19 Comp. Hygin. Poet. Ast. 7, p. 372. The caduceus was the magic staff by which Hermes stopped the feud of two serpents. The Leucadian leap was the plunge into the grave taken every evening by the sun beyond the western promontory,

"A rock

The utmost verge of earth

The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow

Frowned o'er the silver sea."-SHELLEY'S Queen Mab.

20 For love itself, the "bitter sweet" (Sappho, Frag. 31), may be called a kind of warfare;

"Juveni ardenti castam donare puellam

Quid faciunt hostes captâ crudelius urbe ?"

CATULLUS, Cant. 62. 24.

The Cabbalistic idea of marriages being preordained in heaven (Gfrörer, Urchristen

if not practically corrected. The sentiment was purified simultaneously with the exaltation of its object, for in order that Love might exercise his proper influence over religion and philosophy it was necessary that the god of Nature should cease to be a god of terrors, a personification of mere power, an inflictor of evil, and an unrelenting judge. Plato's philosophy, in which this change became for ever established, was emphatically a mediation of Love. It was Love, he tells us, whose inspiration first kindled the light of arts and imparted them to mankind"; and not only the arts of mere existence, but the heavenly art of wisdom which supports the universe. Love, too, is the inspirer of high and generous deeds, of noble selfdevotion; for many who have loved have not hesitated willingly to expose themselves to die for others: without this incitement neither state nor individual could do anything beautiful or great. "Love is peace and good-will among men, calm upon the waters, repose and stillness in the storm, the balm of sleep in sadness. Before him all harsh passions flee away, he is author of soft affections, destroyer of ungentle thoughts, merciful and mild, the admiration of the wise, the delight of the gods. Love divests us of all alienation from each other, and fills our vacant hearts with overflowing sympathy; he is the valued treasure of the fortunate, and desired by the unhappy (therefore unhappy because they possess him not), the parent of grace, of gentleness, of delicacy; a cherisher of all that is good, but guileless as to evil; in labour and in fear, in longings of the affections or in soarings of the reason, our best pilot, confederate, supporter, and saviour; ornament and governor of all things human and divine; the best, the loveliest, whom every one should follow with songs of exultation, uniting in the divine harmony with which Love for ever soothes the mind of men and gods."

22

thum, ii. p. 54) seems to have been reversed by the inventors of Greek fable, the Arn of Paris, who gave the palm to the author of “μaxλoovvn aλsysın” (Iliad, xxiv. 30. Comp. vi. 356), properly belonging to the infernal world.

21 Sympos. 179 sq. 196 sq.

22 Plato, Symp. 197 (or 418).

Yet, properly speaking, it is not Love itself which is beautiful, but the object it pursues. Love has many sorts or degrees; there is the Eros of cosmogony, the physical attraction in the inanimate, binding atom to atom or element to element; then there is the sexual passion shared by man and brute, the dread power which of old united Erebus to night, and overpowering man as well as nature, led Antigone to the bridal bed of Hades 24. But man is capable of a higher love, which, marrying mind with mind and with the universe, brings forth all that is noblest in his faculties, and lifts him beyond himself. This higher Love is described by Plato as being himself neither mortal nor immortal, but a power intermediate between the human and the divine, filling up the mighty interval and binding the universe together. He is chief of those celestial emissaries" who carry to gods the prayers of men, and bring down to men the gifts of the gods. He is allegorically the son of heavenly Plenty 26 and mortal Poverty "7; and in the same "garden of God," " where it may be supposed that man's estrangement began", divine plenteousness is said to have mingled with human feebleness and want, and their natural offspring was Love. The Fall was the experience of a want; Love, its antidote, is a child of Want. And as the child of poverty and plenty, his nature and fortune participate in those of his parents. "He is for ever poor, and far from being beautiful as mankind imagine, for he is squalid and withered; he flies low along the ground, is homeless and unsandalled; sleeping without covering before the doors and in the unsheltered streets, and possessing so far his mother's nature 23 Theog. 125. 24 Soph. Antig. 777. 781. 804. 816.

27

25 i. e., the dæmons.

26

28

Пlogos is son of Metis, meaning probably the divine fulness arising from philosophy. Zeller, Gr. Phil. ii. 168.

27 Compare the legend of Koros and Chresmosyne, in Philo-Judæus de Animalibus Sacrificio Idoneis, My. ii. 224. Wyttenbach's note to Plutarch de ei Delph. 9. Sympos. 2035.

28 « Εις τον του Διος κηπου.”

29 The house of Cadmus (the Cosmos) was also the temple of Demeter, and the marriage-chamber of Semele and Harmonia. Paus. ix. 12. 3-16. 3.

30 Comp. Matt. viii. 20. Luke ix. 58. John xvi. 33. 'Paupertas olim philosophiæ vernacula." Apuleius de Magiâ, p. 432.