and passionate elements have no place in His nature. So we should infer
from the reason of the thing, but there is no indication in Plato's own
writings that this was his meaning. Or, again, when he explains the
different characters of men by referring them back to the nature of the God
whom they served in a former state of existence, we are inclined to ask
whether he is serious: Is he not rather using a mythological figure, here
as elsewhere, to draw a veil over things which are beyond the limits of
mortal knowledge? Once more, in speaking of beauty is he really thinking
of some external form such as might have been expressed in the works of
Phidias or Praxiteles; and not rather of an imaginary beauty, of a sort
which extinguishes rather than stimulates vulgar love,--a heavenly beauty
like that which flashed from time to time before the eyes of Dante or
Bunyan? Surely the latter. But it would be idle to reconcile all the
details of the passage: it is a picture, not a system, and a picture which
is for the greater part an allegory, and an allegory which allows the
meaning to come through. The image of the charioteer and his steeds is
placed side by side with the absolute forms of justice, temperance, and the
like, which are abstract ideas only, and which are seen with the eye of the
soul in her heavenly journey. The first impression of such a passage, in
which no attempt is made to separate the substance from the form, is far
truer than an elaborate philosophical analysis.

It is too often forgotten that the whole of the second discourse of
Socrates is only an allegory, or figure of speech. For this reason, it is
unnecessary to enquire whether the love of which Plato speaks is the love
of men or of women. It is really a general idea which includes both, and
in which the sensual element, though not wholly eradicated, is reduced to
order and measure. We must not attribute a meaning to every fanciful
detail. Nor is there any need to call up revolting associations, which as
a matter of good taste should be banished, and which were far enough away