We see no reason whatever why the above should have been diluted down to such a version as this:—
'I see, Theodorus, that you perfectly apprehend the nature of my complaint; but I am even more pugnacious than the giants of old, for I have met with no end of heroes. Many a Hercules, many a Theseus, mighty in words, have broken my head; nevertheless, I am always at this rough game, which inspires me like a passion. Please, then, to indulge me with a trial, for your own edification as well as mine.'
The following (p. 175, A.) is not satisfactory:—
'And when some one boasts of a catalogue of twenty-five ancestors, and goes back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot understand his poverty of ideas. Why is he unable to calculate that Amphitryon had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody, and was such as fortune made him, and he had a fiftieth, and so on? He is amused at the notion that he cannot do a sum, and thinks that a little arithmetic would have got rid of his senseless vanity.'
What Plato really says is this:—
'But, when men pride themselves on a list of five-and-twenty ancestors, and trace them back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, it seems to him surprising that they should make these trumpery reckonings; and they should not be able (further) to calculate that the twenty-fifth from Amphitryon backwards was just such a person as fortune chanced to make him, or at least the fiftieth from him, and thus to get rid of the vanity of a senseless mind,—at this he cannot suppress a smile.'
In p. 194, C., the words τὰ ἰόντα διὰ τῶν αἰσθήσεων, ἐνσημαινόμενα εἰς τοῦτ τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς κέαρ, ὃ ἔφη Ὅμηρος, &c., should be rendered, 'the impressions entering us through our senses, leaving their marks on this heart's core, as Homer called it, intending to express in allegory the resemblance between κῆρ and κηρός,' &c. Mr. Jowett rather loosely turns it,—'the impressions which pass through the senses and sink into the [waxen] heart of the soul, as Homer says in a parable,' &c. And just below, the words εἶτα οὐ παραλλάττουσι τῶν αἰσθήσεων τὰ σημεῖα, which he renders 'and are not liable to confusion,' might just as well have been brought out in their true sense, 'and further, they do not misapply the impressions of (or left by) the senses;' for παραλλάσσειν is 'to change wrongly,' and is a word selected as exactly and most happily representing the idea Plato wished to convey, that confused memories owe their confusion to not keeping distinctly apart the impressions formerly received. A few lines further on, ὅταν λάσιόν του τὸ κέαρ ᾖ, ὃ δὴ ἐπῄνεσεν ὁ πάντα σοφὸς ποιητὴς, ἢ ὅταν κοπρῶδες &c., there are some points which only a careful rendering will bring out. In taking a delicate impression of a seal or gem on clarified wax, a hair left in it would mar the impression. And the dark yellow colour of natural wax was thought by the Greeks to be made foul by the dirt of the insects; clarifying it, in fact, was 'defæcation.' So we render it thus:—'When, then, a man's heart has hairs in it, which is the state the all-wise poet referred to [in calling it λάσιον κῆρ ], or when it has dirt left in it, or is made of wax that is not pure [but adulterated], or too soft or too hard, then,' &c. Now this hardly appears in Mr. Jowett's version, 'But when the heart of any one is shaggy, as the poet who knew everything says, or muddy and of impure wax, or very soft, or very hard, then,' &c.
Of the Phædrus, as a whole, Mr. Jowett appears to us to give a correct account, in saying (Introd., p. 552) that
'the continuous thread which appears and reappears throughout is rhetoric. This is the ground into which the rest of the dialogue is inlaid, in parts embroidered with fine words, "in order to please Phædrus." The speech of Lysias and the first speech of Socrates are examples of the false rhetoric, as the second speech of Socrates is adduced as an instance of the true. But the true rhetoric is based upon dialectic, and dialectic is a sort of inspiration akin to love; they are two aspects of philosophy in which the technicalities of rhetoric are absorbed. The true knowledge of things in heaven and earth is based upon enthusiasm or love of the ideas; and the true order of speech or writing proceeds according to them.'
With regard to the first speech of Socrates on Love (p. 237, C., to 241, D.) it appears to us that it is not so much 'an example of the false rhetoric,' as a proof how much better and more logically even a paradoxical subject can be treated by a dialectician than by a mere rhetorician. The hit at Phædrus for having given no definition whatever of his subject (p. 237, C.) is one of the points of contrast which is very significant; and there is this subtle irony underlying the whole speech, that whereas Socrates undertook to prove that χαρίζεσθαι μὴ ἐρῶντι was better than χαρίζεσθαι ἐρῶντι, his essay is made to turn, in fact, simply on the latter point, μὴ χαρίζεσθαι ἐρῶντι, so as to be a diatribe against vicious παιδεραστία; only a word or two at the end being added in apparent sanction of the other, and by way of verbally fulfilling the engagement he had made: λέγω οὖν ἑνι λόγῳ, ὅτι ὅσα τὸν ἕτερον λελοιδορήκαμεν, τῷ ἑτέρῳ τἀναντία τούτων ἀγαθὰ πρόσεστι (p. 341, fin.) And the palinodia, or pretended recantation (p. 244, seq.), cleverly pursues the same theme, by showing that love, in its philosophical and nonsensual phase, is a divine emotion, and the source of every blessing to man. The famous allegory that follows, which means that Reason should control Passion, gives a sketch of the orderly and well-trained man, gradually recovering, even as the depraved mind gradually loses, the impressions and memories of the god-like existence men enjoyed in a previous state. The latter part of the dialogue hangs on to the allegory, not indeed very directly; rather, we should say, it reverts to the former part, and is intended to show, by a critique of the two essays, that no essayist or speech-maker can hope to succeed, who derives all his art from rules and treatises and the pedantic phraseology of the teachers. He must trust to dialectic, i.e., the science of hard and close reasoning, if he would rise above mere δημηγορία, or clap-trap; and psychology itself must form the basis of dialectic.