 |
Footnotes. Plato: concerning metempsychosis
|
|
|
|
Footnotes
414: 1 Not into a mathematical cone, but into an egg-shaped or elliptical form resembling that of a pine-cone.
414: 2 This shows that the soul was thought of as being without or outside body of every kind, and body was taken into it.
415: 1 Cf. Pistis Sophia, pp. 371 and 367.
415: 2 That is, presumably, ἀ ν ά γ ν ω σ μ α —a philosophical discourse, or sacred sermon.
415: 3 As distinguished from “exist. ” Latin, however, is but a poor medium for the expression of philosophical distinctions.
416: 1 ν ο ῦ ς ὑ λ ι κ ό ς.
416: 2 The augoeides.
416: 3 Or of contemplative reason, synthesis as opposed to analysis.
417: 1 That is, the elements other than those of earth.
417: 2 Ed. Eyssenhardt (F. ), pp. 531 ff. (Leipzig, 1893).
418: 1 Cf., for instance, Maass (E. ), Die Tagesgö tter in Rom und den Provinzen, p. 33. See R. 53, n. 1.
419: 1 For references, see R. 53, n. 2.
421: 1 Smith and Wace’s D. of Christ. Biog., ii. 849-851.
422: 1 In Irenæ us (C. Hæ r., I. xxx. 5; ed. Stieren, i. 266) this sevenfold serpent is the son of Ialdabaoth (the Creative Mind), and is said to be “mind, ” also “crooked mind, ” coiled up like a serpent.
423: 1 C. Cels., VI. xxv. ff.
424: 1 Plainly a conflation of Persian and Chaldæ an ideas.
424: 2 Cheyne’s article, “Behemoth and Leviathan, ” in the Encyclopæ dia Biblica.
424: 3 Charles’ Trans., lx. 7 ff. (Ethiop. V., p. 155).
425: 1 See Charles, op. cit., p. 155, n. 7.
426: 1 Oannes also comes to teach from the Waters of the Euphrates; the Jewish overwriter of the Naassene Document (see “Myth of Man in the Mysteries”) equates Euphrates with Great Jordan, and this with the Stream of Ocean; and, curiously enough, Origen (xxviii. ) ascribes the Ophite teaching to a certain Euphrates, of whom no one else has ever heard. It is, however, a common error of the Church Fathers to mistake a principle of the Gnosis for the founder of a heresy.
426: 2 See Salmon, loc. sup. cit.
427: 1 According to Cheyne’s rendering in the above-quoted article.
427: 2 That is, presumably, the Hō rus-like; thus showing traces of an Egyptian element.
p. 429
XIII
PLATO: CONCERNING METEMPSYCHOSIS
“And the soul’s vice is ignorance. For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Good, is blinded by the body’s passions and tossed about.
“This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load; not as the ruler, but the ruled. ”—C. H., x. (xi. ) 8. 1
For the better understanding of this passage, we may appropriately refresh the memory of our readers with the Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls, as given in the Phæ drus, 248 ff., using for this purpose the best translation we have in English, namely, that of Stewart, 2 as a basis, but often departing from it for greater clearness.
|
|
|
THE SOUL AND HER MYSTERIES IN THE “PHÆ DRUS”
“This is the life of the Gods. Of the other Souls, whosoever followeth God best, and is being made most like unto Him, keepeth the Head 3 of her Charioteer
p. 430
lifted up into the Space without the firmament; so she is carried round with the circuit thereof, yet being [still] troubled with the Horses, 1 and hardly beholding the Things-which-are; so she is now lifted up, now sinketh down, and because of the compulsion of the Horses, seeth some of the Things-which-are, and some she seeth not.
“And the rest of the Souls, you must know, follow all striving after that which is above, but unable [to reach it], and so are carried round together and sink below it, 2 trampling upon one another, and running against one another, and pressing on for to outstrip one another, with mighty great sound of tumult and sweat.
“And here by reason of the unskilfulness 3 of the Charioteers, many Souls are maimed, and many have many feathers [of their wings] broken; and all, greatly travailing, depart without initiation in the Sight of That-which-is, and departing betake them to the food of Opinion.
“Now this is why there is so great anxiety to see the Space where is the Plain of Truth, —both because the pasture suited to the Best Part of the Soul groweth in the Meadow there, and the power of wing, whereby the Soul is lightly carried up, is nourished by it, and that the law of Adrasteia is that whatsoever Soul by following after God hath seen somewhat of the true things, shall be without affliction till its next journey round; and if she can always do this, 4 she shall be without hurt alway.
p. 431
“But when through incapacity to follow [God] she doth not see, and, overtaken by some evil chance, filled with forgetfulness and wickedness, she is weighed down, and, being weighed down, she sheds the feathers of her wings and falls on to the Earth, —then is the law not to plant her 1 in her first birth in a beast’s nature; but to implant the Soul that hath seen most into the seed of one who shall become a Wisdom-lover, or a lover of the Beautiful, or a man who truly loves the Muses; the Soul that hath seen second best, into the seed of one who shall become a king that loveth law, and is a warrior and a true ruler; the Soul that hath seen third, unto the seed of one who shall become busied in civic duties, or in some stewardship, or in affairs; the one that hath seen fourth, into the seed of one who shall be a hardship-loving master of the body’s discipline or skilled in healing of the body; the Soul that hath seen fifth, into that which shall have a life connected with the oracles or mystic rites some way; 2 unto the sixth a life poetic shall be joined, or that of some one or of another of the tribe of copiers; unto the seventh, the life of workman or of husbandman; unto the eighth, that of a sophist or a demagogue; unto the ninth, that of a tyrant.
“In all these lives, whoever lives them righteously obtains a better fate; he who unrighteously, a worse.
“Now to the selfsame state from which each Soul hath come, she cometh not again for some ten thousand years. For sooner than this period no Soul [re-]gains
|
|
|
p. 432
its wings, except the Soul of him who has loved wisdom naturally or contrary to nature. 1
“Such Souls in the third period of a thousand years, if they have chosen thrice this life successively, thus getting themselves wings, depart in the three thousandth year. 2
“But the other Souls, when they have ended their first life, are brought to judgment; and being judged, some go to places of correction below the Earth and pay the penalty, while others are rewarded by being raised unto a certain space in Heaven where they live on in a condition appropriate unto the life they lived in a man’s form.
“But in the thousandth year both classes come to the lottery of lives, and each doth make choice of its second life, whatever it may choose. 3
“And now is it that a Soul that once had had a man’s life doth pass into a brute’s life, 4 and from a
p. 433
brute, he who was once a man, passes again into a man; for that indeed the Soul that never hath seen truth, will never come into this configuration. 1
“For we must understand ‘man, ’ in the sense of form, as one proceeding from many sensations and collected into a unit by means of ratiocination. 2 But this 3 is recollection (ἀ ν ά μ ν η σ ι ς ) of those things which our Soul once did see when she journeyed with God, 4 and looked beyond the things we now call things that are, by raising her face 5 to That-which-really-is.
“Wherefore of right, alone the understanding of the Wisdom-lover hath got wings; for he is ever engaged upon those things in memory as far as he can be, on being engaged at which, as being a God, he is divine.
p. 434
“The man then who doth make a right use of memories such as these, ever being made perfect in perfect perfectionings, alone becometh really Perfect. 1
“But in as much as he eschews the things that men strive after, and is engaged in the Divine [alone], he is admonished by the many as though he were beside himself, 2 for they cannot perceive he is inspired by God. ”
|
|
|
