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COMMENTARY. Footnotes
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COMMENTARY
The question that one naturally asks oneself is: Did Plato conclude his great treatise on the Ideal State with a popular legend in jest, or had he some deeper purpose? I cannot but think that he was jesting seriously. Is it too wild a supposition that he is hinting at things which he could not disclose because of his oath? Those who knew would understand; those who did not would think he was jesting simply, and so the mysteries would not be disclosed.
In any case we have, I think, got a hint of the part played by the Daimon in our treatise. Whether or not Hermes “copied” the idea from Plato, or both derived it from the same tradition, must be left to the fancy and taste of individual scholars. The Daimon is the watcher over the “way of life” (ἦ θ ο ς ); he is not necessarily a Kakodaimon, but so to speak the Kā rmic Agent of the soul, appointed to carry out the “choice” of that soul, both good and ill, according to the Law of Necessity. 1 The choice is man’s; Nature adjusts the balance.
The Vision is of a typical nature, and the types are mythologized in the persons of well-known characters in Grecian story. The “way of life” the souls choose becomes the garment of “habit” they are to wear, their form of personality, or kā rmic limitation. Apparently some souls, instead of choosing a reincarnation in a human body, prefer to live the “lives” of certain animal natures. Are we then to believe that Plato seriously endorsed the popular ideas of metempsychosis? Or is it possible that he is referring to some state of existence of souls, which was symbolized by certain animal types
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in the Mysteries; as was certainly the case with the “lion” and “eagle, ” though the “swan” and “nightingale” and “ape” are, as far as I am aware, never mentioned in this connection? Can it be that Plato here gives play to his imagination, basing his speculations on some general idea he may have learned in Egypt?
We know from the so-called “Diagram of the Ophites, ” which is still traceable in a fragmentary form in the polemic of Origen against Celsus, that the “seven spheres” of the lower psychic nature were characterised by the names of animals: lion, bull, serpent, eagle, bear, dog, ass. We also know how the whole subject of animal correspondences preoccupied the attention of the Egyptian priesthood. But not only can we now make no reasonable scheme out of the fragmentary indications that have come down to us, but we also feel pretty well certain that if Plutarch’s account of the beliefs of the later Egyptians on the subject is approximately reliable, the priests themselves of those days had no longer any consistent scheme.
We may, therefore, conclude either that the whole matter was a vain superstition entirely devoid of any basis in reality; or that there was a psychic science of animal natures and their relationship to man which was once the possession of the priesthood of the ancient civilisation of Egypt, but that it was lost, owing to the departure from amongst men of those who had the power to understand it, and subsequently only fragments of misunderstood tradition remained among the lesser folk on earth. This at anyrate is the theory of our Trismegistic treatises.
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Footnotes
437: 1 Jowett, Dialogues, iii. clxvi.
438: 1 The Theosophical Review (April, May, June, 1898), xxii. 145 ff., 232 ff., 312 ff.
439: 1 And this I find to be the opinion of the last commentator on the subject; see Stewart (J. A. ), The Myths of Plato (London, 1905), pp. 152 ff.
440: 1 So also Dreyer (J. L. E. ), History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler (Cambridge, 1906), pp. 56 ff.
440: 2 The daimonian region.
440: 3 That is the eleventh day; Er, it will be remembered, was “unconscious” for twelve days.
440: 4 Or shaft.
440: 5 That which cannot be destroyed or changed.
441: 1 The shape would thus approximate to an oblate spheroid.
441: 2 To carry out the metaphor of the jars.
441: 3 Lit., “back. ”
441: 4 The names of the spheres may be deduced from Tim. 38, and are as follows: 1. Fixed Stars (all-coloured); 2. Saturn (yellow); 3. Jupiter (whitish); 4. Mars (reddish); 5. Mercury (yellowish); 6. Venus (white); 7. Sun (light-colour); 8. Moon (light-colour reflected). How the above statements as to “width of rim” and colours are to be made to work in with the scheme of rates of motions and numbers given in Tim. 36, I have not as yet been able to discover from any commentator. And seeing that Er is said to have seen this mystery from a region that transcended even the daimonian region, it is perhaps out of place to insist on a purely physical interpretation of the data.
442: 1 Or number-turns.
444: 1 A literary embellishment from the Tragic Muse of Greece, and the mythical recitals of Thyestian banquets.
444: 2 ἔ θ ε ι ἄ ν ε υ φ ι λ ο σ ο φ ί α ς.
445: 1 The Tartarean spheres of the invisible world, popularly believed to be below the earth; that is, philosophically, more material than earth-life.
445: 2 The vision (θ έ α ) was therefore typical.
445: 3 The birds are typical of souls living in the air—that is, in aery bodies and not in physical ones; or types of intelligence.
445: 4 Or Thamyris, an ancient Thracian bard; it is said that in his conceit he imagined he could surpass the Muses in song, in consequence of which he was deprived of his sight and the power of singing.
446: 1 Notice the “lion” and “eagle” are selected as types—they being typical sun-animals, as we have already seen.
446: 2 The fabled engineer of the Trojan Horse.
447: 1 τ ὰ ἐ π ι κ λ ω σ θ έ ν τ α —a play on Κ λ ω θ ώ.
447: 2 This is probably a symbol of the heaven-plane.
447: 3 ο ὖ τ ὸ ὕ δ ω ρ ἀ γ γ ε ί ο ν ο ὐ δ ὲ ν σ τ έ γ ε ι ν. So this is usually translated; but as the souls drink of it, the appropriateness of the rendering is not very apparent. On the other hand, σ τ έ γ ε ι ν is used of things that are water-tight—e. g. houses and ships; hence “whose water no vessel can keep out. ” The “vessel” might thus stand for the ship of the soul; and if so, we are in contact with an Egyptian idea. The River is in the Desert—the reverse of the Nile and Egypt, of Osiris and Isis, their Typhonean counterparts.
448: 1 For the more intimate teaching on this point, see C. H., x. (xi. ) 16 ff.
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