(Greek) Republic (Greek)
also Phaedrus). Under one aspect 'the idea is love'; under another,
'truth.' In both the lover of wisdom is the 'spectator of all time and of
all existence.' This is a 'mystery' in which Plato also obscurely
intimates the union of the spiritual and fleshly, the interpenetration of
the moral and intellectual faculties.
The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed;
the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of
Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the
complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the
force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme
idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl,
staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have
been ashamed to make known if he had been sober. The state of his
affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they
appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man
in the speech of Pausanias.
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