him literally animated, and gave him so lively an interest in, this
world of the purely outward aspects of men and things.--Did material
things, such things as they had had around them all that evening,
really need apology for being there, to interest one, at all? Were
not all visible objects--the whole material world indeed, according
to the consistent testimony of philosophy in many forms--"full of
souls"? embarrassed perhaps, partly imprisoned, but still eloquent
souls? Certainly, the contemplative philosophy of Plato, with its
figurative imagery and apologue, its manifold aesthetic colouring,
its measured eloquence, its music for the outward ear, had been, like
Plato's old master himself, a two-sided or two-coloured thing.
Apuleius was a Platonist: only, for him, the Ideas of Plato were no
creatures of logical abstraction, but in very truth informing souls,
in every type and variety of sensible things. Those noises in the
house all supper-time, sounding through the tables and along the
walls:--were they only startings in the old rafters, at the impact of
the music and laughter; or rather importunities of the secondary
selves, the true unseen selves, of the persons, nay! of the very
things around, essaying to break through their frivolous, merely
transitory surfaces, to remind one of abiding essentials beyond them,
[88] which might have their say, their judgment to give, by and by,
when the shifting of the meats and drinks at life's table would be
over? And was not this the true significance of the Platonic
doctrine?--a hierarchy of divine beings, associating themselves with
particular things and places, for the purpose of mediating between
God and man--man, who does but need due attention on his part to
become aware of his celestial company, filling the air about him,
thick as motes in the sunbeam, for the glance of sympathetic
intelligence he casts through it.