The human soul, coming from eternity into life, has not forgotten altogether “the sea of beauty” of which it had once enjoyed the vision. All beautiful things remind us of it, and (once more to quote Wordsworth):
“Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither.”
Thus all men possess a natural yearning for beauty, however much their glimpses of it may have been darkened and distorted by their earthly experiences, and in their beloved they are seeing the reflection of the reality of beauty. The procreant impulse is part of man’s yearning for immortality; it is out of goodness and beauty that the immortal is to be begotten.
With Plato’s political views as expressed especially in the “Republic” we shall be able to deal more fully in the next chapter, when we come to consider the political theories which arose out of the conditions of the city-state. It is clear that in the hands of men like Socrates and Plato philosophy was usurping the place which according to our notions religion ought to occupy in the minds of men. Greek religion, or at least the official Olympian worship as defined by Homer, Hesiod, and the Tragic Poets, had never attained much influence over the morality of its worshippers. But now philosophy was definitely claiming to teach virtue. Not only sophists like Protagoras and Hippias, but even philosophers like Socrates and Plato, claimed to put right conduct on a basis of reason, and therefore of education. Hence followed the deplorable consequence that virtue was to be for the rich and well-born. Philosophy was snobbish from the start; it finished by excluding all but the select few from any chance of salvation, and, if it had had its way, would have excluded them from any political rights whatever. Socrates seldom discriminates between wise and learned, nor between wise and good. The strength of Greek philosophy is in its earnest opposition to materialism, its proper scorn of base, trivial, and temporary pursuits. But therewith it felt and inculcated a contempt of honest labour, and thereby it drifted farther and farther apart from practical life. For that, of course, the institution of slavery is largely responsible.
Plate LXXXI. BUST OF “SOCRATES”
Mansell & Co.