Clifton Wilbraham Collins

“ No fear that our souls will vanish like smoke, or that the dead sleep on for ever, like Endymion. Our souls are born again; and as life passes into death, so, in the circle of nature, the dead must pass into life; for if this were not so, all things must at last be swallowed up in death.
Again, we have in our minds latent powers of thought—ideas of beauty and equality—which are not given us at our birth, and which we cannot have learnt from experience. Such knowledge is but the soul's recollection of a previous state of existence. ”

“ Wisdom will be the science of protection, possessed by our Guardians; and true Courage will be engrained in the hearts of our soldiers by law and education; and Temperance will be that social harmony pervading the State, and making all the citizens to be of one mind, like strings attempered to one scale. But where is Justice? Here at our feet, after all, for it can be nothing else than our original principle of division of labour: for a man is just when he does his own business, and does not meddle with his neighbour's. ”

“ The attractions of gold or of glory are of a nobler stamp; but the best and purest of all pleasures that a man can feel, and the ineffable sweetness of which the world can never realise, is that which the philosopher alone finds in the study and contemplation of existence. For he prunes close the hydra-headed passions by which the many are enslaved, and subjects the lion to the man, by making reason rule his soul. ”

“ There, on a certain day, gods and demigods ascend the heavens—Zeus leading the way in a winged chariot—to hold high festival, and all who can may follow. The gods and the immortal souls, whose steeds have full-grown wings, are carried by a revolution of the spheres into a celestial world beyond, where all space is filled by a sea of intangible essence which the mind—"lord of the soul"—alone can contemplate: and here are the absolute ideas of Truth and Beauty and Justice. ”

“ Our State might be realised, Socrates replies, on one condition—preposterous as it will seem to the world—"philosophers must be kings;" or, failing this, the princes of this world must be imbued with the true philosophic spirit.
And what, then, is a philosopher? He is a rare and perfect being, who takes all knowledge and virtue as his portion; he is "the spectator of all time and all existence," for he knows the absolute and real ideas of beauty, truth, and justice—far removed from the uncertain twilight of opinion. He is free from the meanness or injustice of petty natures ”

“ Clearly, then, the real philosopher, who is to stand aloof from that wild beast's den which we call public life, has no place or lot among us as things are now. He is like some rare exotic, which, if transplanted to a foreign soil, would soon fade and wither; for he requires a perfect State to fulfil the perfection of his own nature—a State such as may perhaps have once existed in the countless ages that are passed, or even exists now "in some foreign clime far beyond the limits of our own horizon." ”

“ Socrates at once steps up to Protagoras, and tells him the purpose for which they have sought him; and the great man makes a gracious answer. "Yes—Hippocrates has done right to come to him, for he is not as other Sophists. He will not treat him like a schoolboy, and weary him with astronomy and music. No; he will teach him nobler and more useful lessons than these: prudence, that he may order his own house well; and political wisdom, that he may prove himself a good citizen and a wise statesman." ”

“ Socrates, in his own fashion, disproves these monstrous doctrines, and forces Callicles, though much against his will, to admit that pleasure and virtue are not always identical; that really Virtue is, or should be, the end of all our actions; that in the long-run the just and temperate man alone is happy; and that he who leads a robber's life is abhorred by gods and men while upon earth, and goes down to Hades with his soul branded with the sears of his crimes. There must come a day of judgment and retribution, when each man shall receive the just reward of his deeds. ”

“ For the soul, on her journey to the world below, carries nothing with her but her nurture and education." After death comes the judgment; the guardian angel of each soul conducts her through the road with many windings that leads to the place where all are tried. After this the impure soul wanders without a guide in helpless misery, until a certain period is accomplished, and then she is borne away to her own place. ”

“ And in war, the runaway and coward shall be degraded: but the brave shall be crowned and shall wed the fair; he shall be honoured at the sacrifice and banquet, and if he falls, we shall proclaim that he sprang from the race of gold, and now haunts the earth in the form of a holy and powerful spirit.
"War between Greek and Greek is an unnatural feud, and therefore we will not despoil the bodies of the dead for there is a meanness in injuring a body whence the soul has fled; nor will we enslave a free Greek, nor lay waste Greek land, or burn houses, as heretofore." ”

“ Our ideal villain will reduce crime to a science—ho will have wealth, and money, and honour, and influence—all that this world esteems precious; he will have a high reputation for justice (for this is the crowning exploit of injustice) ; he will accomplish all his ends by force or fraud, and the gods, whose favour he will win by costly offerings, will sanctify the means. While the perfectly simple and noble man, clothed only in his justice, will suffer the worst consequences of a lifelong reputation for seeming to be that which he really is not—unjust. ”

“ Then, by a further train of reasoning, Socrates concludes that the soul is beyond all doubt immortal and imperishable. This being so, a graver question follows—"What manner of persons ought we ourselves to be?" "If death had been the end of all things, then the wicked would gain by dying; for they would have been happily rid not of their bodies only, but of their own wickedness, together with their souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, no release or salvation from evil can be found except in the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom. ”

“ The fulsome compliments of friends and advisers, the senseless clamour of the law-court or the Assembly, combine to ruin him; and, worse than all, the influence of the Sophists, who act as keepers to this many-headed monster of a people, understanding its habits and humouring its caprices, calling what it fancies good and what it dislikes evil. And thus Philosophy herself is left desolate, and a crowd of vulgar interlopers leave their proper trades and rush in like escaped prisoners into a sanctuary, and profane the Temple of Truth. ”

“ The question is again put to the vote, and Socrates is condemned to death—the majority this time being far larger than before.
Then he makes his farewell address to his judges. They have condemned him because he would not condescend to tears or entreaties; and perhaps if he had done so he might have escaped. But on such terms he prefers death to life, and indeed it is good for him to die; for death is either annihilation, where sense and feeling are not, or it is a passage of the soul from this world to another. In either case, he will be at rest. He will sleep for ever without a dream ”

“ Justice is thus the gain of the strong and the loss of the weak; for the just man's honesty is ruinous to himself, while the unjust man, especially if he can plunder wholesale like the tyrant, is happy and prosperous, and well spoken of; and thus Injustice itself is a stronger and lordlier thing than Justice.
To this barefaced sophistry Socrates replies that the unjust man may go too far; in overreaching his neighbours—just and unjust alike—he breaks all the rules of art, and proves himself an unskilful and ignorant workman, who has no fixed standard in life to act by. ”

“ And as sometimes a prisoner in this cave may be released from his chains, and turned round, and led up to the light of day; so may our souls pass upwards from the darkness of mere opinion, and from the shadowy impressions of sense into the pure sunlight of eternal truth, lighted by the Idea of Good—in itself the source of all truth and beauty. ”

“ Anaximander thought the universe originally was a bath of flames, or a ring of fire broken up into sun, moon, and stars, while the earth remained balanced like a column in the centre. Anaximenes, again, said that "Air ruled over all things; and the Soul, being Air, ruled in man." ”

“ Lastly, Socrates tells them a story, which he has heard from Diotima, "a wise woman." Love is not in reality a god at all, but a spirit which spans the gulf between heaven and earth, carrying to the gods the prayers of men, and to men the commands of the gods. He is the child of Plenty and Poverty. Like his mother, he is always poor and in misery, without house or home to cover him; like his father, "he is a hunter of men, and a bold intriguer, philosopher, enchanter, sorcerer, and sophist," hovering between life and death, plenty and want, knowledge and ignorance. ”

“ Does not the universal testimony of mankind teach us that a God exists? And woe to the rash and presumptuous youth who presumes to charge the Deity with indolence or neglect, merely because he sees the wicked in prosperity, and handing down their power to their children after them. God is no unskilful workman, but in His wisdom has taken thought for all things, both small and great. Each part of the creation has its appointed work and purpose, and all the parts work together to some common end. ”

“ The very fact that evil-doers are punished, not in retaliation for past wrong, but to prevent future wrong, is a proof that certain virtues can be acquired "from study, and exercise, and teaching." In fact, a man's education begins in his cradle. From childhood he is placed under tutors and governors, and stimulated to virtue by admonitions, by threats, or blows. When he arrives at man's estate, the law takes the place of his masters, and compels him to live uprightly. He who rebels against instruction or punishment is either exiled or condemned to death, under the idea that he is incurable. ”

“ The divine wings of his soul are warmed and glow with desire, and he lives in a sort of ecstasy, and shudders "with the misgiving of a former world." Often, indeed, a furious struggle takes place between the charioteer and the dark and vicious horse that wishes to draw the chariot of the soul on to unlawful deeds, and can only be curbed by bit and bridle. ”

“ Thus we may call the world "a visible animal comprehending the visible—itself a visible and sensible God, the image of Him who is intelligible, the greatest, best, fairest, and one most perfect Universe." ”

“ It is not our business (answers Socrates) to insure the happiness of a class. But our Guardians will be happy—that is, if they do their duty, preserve the unity of the State, maintain the golden mean between wealth and poverty, and be ever on the watch against the spirit of innovation—dangerous even in music, doubly so in education—and leave the highest and most sacred legislation to our ancestral god of Delphi. ”

“ Clearly, they should have all the qualities of well-bred dogs—quick to see, swift to follow, and strong to fight—brave and spirited, gentle to friends, but fierce against their foes. Their natures must be harmonised by philosophy; and philosophy involves education.
In our education we will follow the old routine: first,—Music that is, all training by words and sounds. But we will have a strict censorship of the press, and banish from our State all those lying fables of our mythology, as well as the terrific descriptions of the lower world. ”

“ Of course there are degrees of accuracy in this process, where nature is helped out by custom; and a name, like a picture, may be a more or less perfect likeness of a person or thought. Great truths may be learned through names; but there are higher forms of knowledge, which can only be learnt from the ideas themselves, of which our words are but faint impressions; and "no man of sense will put himself or his education in the power of names," or believe that the world is in a perpetual flux and transition, "like a leaky vessel." ”

“ Justice always follows Him, and is the punisher of those who fall short of the divine law. To that law, he who would be happy holds fast, and follows it in all humility and order; but he who is lifted up with pride, or money, or honour, or beauty—who has a soul hot with folly, and youth, and insolence, and thinks that he has no need of a guide or ruler, but is able himself to be the guide of others,—he, I say, is left deserted of God ”

“ Letters, like paintings, "preserve a solemn silence, and have not a word to say for themselves;" and, like hothouse plants, they come quickly to their bloom, and as quickly fade away. "Nobler far," he says, "is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who finds a congenial soil, and there with knowledge engrafts and sows words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them seeds which may bear fruit in other natures nurtured in other ways—making the seed everlasting, and the possessors happy to the utmost extent of human happiness." ”

“ Our music, too, shall be simple and spirited strains after the "Dorian mood;" and in sculpture and in art we will encourage the same pure taste. Thus, with fair and graceful forms everywhere around them, our youth will drink into their souls, "like gales blowing from healthy lands," all inspirations of truth and beauty. ”

“ But when he quotes this beautiful notion with great glee to a friend, he is met by the satirical answer—"What is there then no justice in the world when the sun goes down?" And when Socrates begs his friend to tell him his own honest opinion, he says, "Fire in the abstract;" which is not very intelligible. Another says, "No,—not fire in the abstract, but the abstraction of heat in fire." A third professes to laugh at this, and says, with Anaxagoras, that Justice is Mind; for Mind, they say, has absolute power, and mixes with nothing, and governs all things, and permeates all things. ”

“ For when the soul separates from the body, each part still carries with it its mortal features; and he who was tall in his lifetime will be tall after death, and he who had flowing hair will have flowing hair still, and the slave who was branded by the scourge will carry the scars upon his body into the other world. ”

“ Like some divine inspiration, the glories of this other world possess and haunt them; and it is because their souls are ever struggling upwards, and fluttering like a bird that longs to soar heavenwards, and because they are rapt in contemplation and careless of earthly matters, that the world calls the philosopher, the lover, and the poet "mad." ”

“ Even in the days of Saturn the same law prevailed as now—that men should be judged, and that those who had done good should be sent to the Islands of the Blest, and those who had done evil should be thrown into Tartarus. But judgment was then given on the day of a man's death, and both the judges and the judged were alive, and owing to men being still arrayed in beauty or rank or wealth, and the garment of the body also acting as a veil to the perceptions of the soul in the case of the judge, the judgment was not always just. ”