Eros (he says) is, mad, irrational, superseding reason and prudence in the individual mind.[27] This is true: yet still Eros exercises a beneficent and improving influence. Not all madness is bad. Some varieties of it are bad, but others are good. Some arise from human malady, others from the inspirations of the Gods: both of them supersede human reason and the orthodoxy of established custom[28] — but the former substitute what is worse, the latter what is better. The greatest blessings enjoyed by man arise from madness, when it is imparted by divine inspiration. And it is so imparted in four different phases and by four different Gods: Apollo infuses the prophetic madness — Dionysus, the ritual or religious — The Muses, the poetical — and Eros, the erotic.[29] This last sort of madness greatly transcends the sober reason and concentration upon narrow objects which is so much praised by mankind generally.[30] The inspired and exalted lover deserves every preference over the unimpassioned friend.
[27] Plato, Phædrus, pp. 265-266. τὸ ἄφρον τῆς διανοίας ἕν τι κοινῇ εἶδος.… τὸ τῆς παρανοίας ὡς ἓν ἐν ἡμῖν πεφυκὸς εἶδος. Compare p. 236 A.
[28] Plato, Phædrus, p. 265 A. Μανίας δέ γε εἴδη δύο· τὴν μέν, ὑπὸ νοσημάτων ἀνθρωπίνων, τὴν δέ, ὑπὸ θείας ἐξαλλαγῆς τῶν εἰωθότων νομίμων γιγνομένην. Compare 249 D.
[29] Plato, Phædrus, p. 244 A. εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἦν ἁπλοῦν τὸ μανίαν κακὸν εἶναι, καλῶς ἂν ἐλέγετο· νῦν δὲ τὰ μέγιστα τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἡμῖν γίγνεται διὰ μανίας, θείᾳ μέντοι δόσει διδομένης.
Compare Plutarch, Ἐρωτικός, c. 16. pp. 758-759, &c.
[30] Plato, Phædrus, p. 245 B. μηδέ τις ἡμᾶς λόγος θορυβείτω δεδιττόμενος ὡς πρὸ τοῦ κεκινημένου τὸν σώφρονα δεῖ προαιρεῖσθαι φίλον.
P. 256 E; ἡ δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ μὴ ἐρῶντος οἰκειότης, σωφροσύνῃ θνητῇ κεκραμένη, θνητά τε καὶ φειδωλὰ οἰκονομοῦσα, ἀνελευθερίαν ὑπὸ πλήθους ἐπανουμένην ὡς ἀρετὴν τῇ φίλῃ ψυχῇ ἐντεκοῦσα, &c.
Poetical mythe delivered by Sokrates, describing the immortality and pre-existence of the soul, and its pre-natal condition of partial companionship with Gods and eternal Ideas.
Plato then illustrates, by a highly poetical and imaginative mythe, the growth and working of love in the soul. All soul or mind is essentially self-moving, and the cause of motion to other things. It is therefore immortal, without beginning or end: the universal or cosmic soul, as well as the individual souls of Gods and men.[31] Each soul may be compared to a chariot with a winged pair of horses. In the divine soul, both the horses are excellent, with perfect wings: in the human soul, one only of them is good, the other is violent and rebellious, often disobedient to the charioteer, and with feeble or half-grown wings.[32] The Gods, by means of their wings, are enabled to ascend up to the summit of the celestial firmament — to place themselves upon the outer circumference or back of the heaven — and thus to be carried round along with the rotation of the celestial sphere round the Earth. In the course of this rotation they contemplate the pure essences and Ideas, truth and reality without either form or figure or colour: they enjoy the vision of the Absolute — Justice, Temperance, Beauty, Science. The human souls, with their defective wings, try to accompany the Gods; some attaching themselves to one God, some to another, in this ascent. But many of them fail in the object, being thrown back upon earth in consequence of their defective equipment, and the unruly character of one of the horses: some however succeed partially, obtaining glimpses of Truth and of the general Ideas, though in a manner transient and incomplete.
[31] Plato, Phædrus, pp. 245-246. Compare Krische, De Platonis Phædro, pp. 49-50 (Göttingen, 1848).