On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    that by reversing all that we have said against the lover , you will find all the good qualities which distinguish the other . Having discoursed to the above effect , Socrates pretended to be going away , lest Phaedrus , whom he rallies upon his extreme fondness for an argument , should compel him to make another discourse ; but presently he affects to perceive what he calls the divine and customary sign , which

    he says , is continually stopping him when he is about to undertake any thing ; and to hear a voice , which will not allow him to depart , until he has expiated an offence which he has committed against the divinity . I am a prophet / he continues ; not a very good one , but ( like a man who writes a bad hand-writing ) good enough for my own use . The soul is in some sort a prophet ; and mine pricked me while I was speaking , and made me even then afraid that I was offending the gods for

    the sake of honour among men ; and I now perceive what my offence is . You have yourself brought , and have made me utter , two most horrible and impious discourses . Is not Love the son of Venus , and one of the gods V ' So it is said , ' replied Phaedrus . ' Not by Lysias , however / rejoins Socrates , ' nor by your speech , which you by your incantations contrived to utter through my lips . If Love is , as he is , a god , or something divine , he cannot be anything evil . Both our speeches , however , represented him as such . I therefore must purify myself ; and . as Stesichorus , who had been struck blind like Homer for

    calumniating Helen , recovered his sight by making a recantation , I will make my Palinodia , more wisely , before I have yet suffered anything from the anger of the god whom I have maligned . Do you not think , indeed , that any person of a generous and a civilized disposition , who either loves or has loved , if he were to hear us saying that lovers contract strong enmities from ' slight causes , and behave jealously and injuriously

    towards the object of their love , would suppose that we had been bred up at sea , and had never seen any liberal and generous attachment ; and would be far indeed from admitting the justice of the censures which we have cast upon Love V Perhaps , said Phsedrus , * he would / * For this reason / said Socrates , * and for fear of the god himself , I will endeavour to efface my reproaches by a panegyric ; and I would advise Lysias to make haste and do the same .

    ' It is a fallacy to maintain that one who loves not , should be favoured in preference to a lover , because the one is in his senses , and the other not . If madness were always and of necessity an evil , this would be ^ very j ust ; but it happens that the very greatest of blessings come to us through madness ; madness given , it is true , by the divinity . The prophetesses at Delphi and Dodona , and elsewhere , have rendered to Greece , both individually and publicly , when frantic , the greatest services , but none that I know of when in their sober senses . There

    would be no end to the enumeration of those who have foretold future events correctly , prophesying by a frenzy inspired from heaven . Those ancients who invented our language , certainly thought madness no disgrace , or they would not have given to the noblest of arts , that of predicting the future , the name of pavticrj ( madness , ) which we have ignorantly corrupted into / uaiTijrq , ( prophesy . ) In like manner , the inquiry into the future , when conducted by those who are in their senses , by observation of the flight of birds , and other signs , received from the ancients ( to indicate that it operated by means of thought and intellect )

    Untitled Article

    412 Plato ' s Dialogues ; the Vhmdrus *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 412, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/30/