recapitulated, and the nature and degrees of knowledge having been
previously set forth in the abstract are represented in a picture: (9) the
fiction of the earth-born men (Republic; compare Laws), in which by the
adaptation of an old tradition Plato makes a new beginning for his society:
(10) the myth of Aristophanes respecting the division of the sexes, Sym.:
(11) the parable of the noble captain, the pilot, and the mutinous sailors
(Republic), in which is represented the relation of the better part of the
world, and of the philosopher, to the mob of politicians: (12) the
ironical tale of the pilot who plies between Athens and Aegina charging
only a small payment for saving men from death, the reason being that he is
uncertain whether to live or die is better for them (Gor.): (13) the
treatment of freemen and citizens by physicians and of slaves by their
apprentices,--a somewhat laboured figure of speech intended to illustrate
the two different ways in which the laws speak to men (Laws). There also
occur in Plato continuous images; some of them extend over several pages,
appearing and reappearing at intervals: such as the bees stinging and
stingless (paupers and thieves) in the Eighth Book of the Republic, who are
generated in the transition from timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which is
to the visible world what the idea of good is to the intellectual, in the
Sixth Book of the Republic: the composite animal, having the form of a
man, but containing under a human skin a lion and a many-headed monster
(Republic): the great beast, i.e. the populace: and the wild beast within
us, meaning the passions which are always liable to break out: the
animated comparisons of the degradation of philosophy by the arts to the
dishonoured maiden, and of the tyrant to the parricide, who 'beats his
father, having first taken away his arms': the dog, who is your only
philosopher: the grotesque and rather paltry image of the argument
wandering about without a head (Laws), which is repeated, not improved,
from the Gorgias: the argument personified as veiling her face (Republic),
as engaged in a chase, as breaking upon us in a first, second and third