And look! what is the result? Scarcely is the 'thing of muscles and sinews' cold: scarcely has high Socrates forgone his queer satyr-like embodiment: when a new luminary has risen into the firmament,—one to shine through thirty centuries certainly,
"Brighter than Jupiter—a blazing star
Brighter than Hesper shining out to sea"
—one that is still to be splendid in the heavens wherever in Europe, wherever in America, wherever in the whole vast realm of the future men are to arise and make question and peer up into the beautiful skies of the Soul. A Phoenix in time has arisen from the ashes of Socrates: from the glory and solemnity of his death a Voice is mystically created that shall go on whispering The Soul wherever men think and strive towards spirituality. —Ah indeed, you were no failure, Socrates—you who were disappointed of your Critias, your Charmides, your Alcibiades, your whole Athens; you were not anything in the very least like a failure; for there was yet one among your disciples—
He says, that one, that he was absent through illness during that last scene of his Teacher's life. I do not know; it has been thought that may have been merely a pretense, an artistic convention, to give a heightened value of impersonality to his marvelous prose:—for it was he who wrote down the account of the death of Socrates for us: that tragedy so transcendent in its beauty and lofty calm. But this much is certain: that day he was born again: became, from a gilded youth of Athens, an eternal luminary in the heavens, and that which he has remained these three-and-twenty hundred years: the Poet-Philosopher of the Soul, the Beacon of the Spirit for the western world….
He had been a brilliant young aristocrat among the crowd that loved to talk with Socrates: the very best thing that Athens could produce in the way of birth, charm, talent, and attainments;—it is a marvel to see one so worshiped of Fortune in this world, turn so easily to become her best adored in the heaven of the Soul. On his father's side he was descended from Codrus, last king of Athens; on his mother's, from Solon: you could get nothing higher in the way of family and descent. In himself, he was an accomplished athlete; a brilliant writer of light prose; a poet of high promise when the mood struck him— and he had ideas of doing the great thing in tragedy presently; trained unusually well in music, and in mathematics; deeply read; with a taste for the philosophies; a man, in short, of culture as deep and balanced as his social standing was high. But it seemed as though the Law had brought all these excellencies together mainly to give the fashionable Athenian world assurance of a man; for here he was in his thirty-first year with nothing much achieved beyond—his favorite pursuit—the writing of mimes for the delectation of his set: "close studies of little social scenes and conversations, seen mostly in the humorous aspect." * He had consorted much with Socrates; at the trial, when it was suggested that a fine might be paid, and the hemlock evitated, it was he who had first subscribed and gone about to raise a sum. But now the death of his friend and Teacher struck him like a great gale amidships; and he was transformed, another man; and the great Star Plato rose, that shines still; the great Voice Plato was lifted to speak for the Soul and to be unequaled in that speaking, in the west, until H.P. Blavatsky came.
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* Murray: Ancient Greek Literature:—whence all this as to
Plato's youth.
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But note what a change had taken place with the ending of the fifth century. Hitherto all the great Athenians had been great Athenians. Aeschylus, witness of eternity, had cried his message down to Athens and to his fellow-citizens; he had poured the waters of eternity into the vial of his own age and place. I speak not of Sophocles, who was well enough rewarded with the prizes Athens had to give him. Euripides again was profoundly concerned with his Athens; and though he was contemned by and held aloof from her, it was the problems of Athens and the time that ate into his soul. Socrates came to save Athens; he did not seek political advancement, but would hold office when it came his way; was enough concerned in politics to be considered a moderate-one cause of his condemnation; but above all devoted himself to raising the moral tone of the Athenian youth and clearing their minds of falsity. Finally, he gave loyalty to his city and its laws as one reason for rejecting Crito's plan for his escape. What he hoped and lived for was, to save Athens; and he was the more content to die, when he saw that this was no longer possible.
But Plato had no part nor lot in Athens. He loathed her doctrine of democracy, as knowing it could come to no good. He had affiliations, like Aeschylus, in Sicily, whither he made certain journeys; and might have stayed there among his fellow Pythagoreans, but for the irascible temper of Dionysius. But much more, and most of all, his affiliations were in the wide Cosmos and all time: as if he foresaw that on him mainly would devolve the task of upholding spiritual ideas in Europe through the millenniums to come. He dwelt apart, and taught in the Groves of Academe outside the walls. Let Athens' foolish politics go forward as they might, or backward—he would meddle with nothing. It has been brought against him that he did nothing to help his city 'in her old age and dotage'; well, he had the business of thousands of coming years and peoples to attend to, and had no time to be accused, condemned, and executed by a parcel of obstreperous cobblers and tinkers hot-headed over the petty politics of their day. The Gods had done with Athens, and were to think now of the great age of darkness that was to come. He was mindful of a light that should arise in Egypt, after some five hundred years; and must prepare wick and oil for the Neo-Platonists. He was mindful that there should be a thing called the Renaissance in Italy; and must attend to what claims Pico di Mirandola and others should make on him for spiritual food. He must consider Holland of the seventeenth century, and England: the Platonists of Cambridge and Amsterdam;—must think of Van Helmont; and of a Vaughan who 'saw eternity the other night'; of a Traherne, who should never enjoy the world aright without some illumination from his star; of a young Milton, penseroso, out watching the Bear in some high lonely tower with thrice-great Hermes, who should unsphere his spirit,
"….. to unfold
What worlds and what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshy nook";
—no, but he must think of all times coming; and how, whenever there should be any restlessness against the tyranny of materialism and dogma, a cry should go up for Plato.—So let Isocrates, the 'old man eloquent,'—let a many-worded not unpeculant patriotic Demosthenes who knew nothing of the God-world—attend to an Athens wherein the Gods were no longer greatly interested;—the great Star Plato should rise up into mid-heaven, and shine not in, but high over Athens and quite apart from her; drawing from her indeed the external elements of his culture, but the light and substance from that which was potent in her no longer.