PLAT

CHAPTER VI

MYTHOLOGY

LATO has the distinction of being the poet-philosopher among the thinkers of the world. He had a mind that laid the foundations for pure speculative metaphysics and at the same time he was gifted with an imagination that so blended itself with his most abstruse thinking that it is difficult to separate his science from his metaphors. And these in the extended form of myths or apologues have such brilliancy of their own that they make the reading of Plato an enjoyment such as only poetry in its highest flights can afford. His myth of the charioteer and the two horses in the Phædrus, the narrative of Er the son of Armenius in the Republic, the figure of the cave in the same dialogue, the myths concerning the origin of love in the Banquet-merely to mention a few examples-have imprinted themselves in the human memory, as Emerson observes, like the signs of the zodiac. Thus a study of the in

fluence of Platonism must attend to the imaginative side of Plato's art as well as to his philosophical teaching. This is especially true of a study of Emerson's Platonism, for his was a temperament in which imagination was highly developed. Feeding naturally on the doctrines of Platonism, he was influenced by Plato's manner of using myths or fables to set forth his teachings.

In The American Scholar Emerson uses a fable to convey his leading conception-the nature of the scholar. "It is one of those fables," he writes, "which out of an unknown antiquity convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end. The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man-present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man." 1

The source of this fable is to be found in Plato's Banquet. There Aristophanes tells of the nature of original men: "The entire form of every individual of the human race 1 Complete Works, I., 82.

was rounded, having the back and sides as in a circle. It had four hands, and legs equal in number to the hands; and two faces upon the circular neck, alike in every way, and one head on both the faces placed opposite, and and from these it is easy

four ears to conjecture how all the other parts were doubled." 1 Such mortals were terrible in force the narrative proceeds-and became so threatening in their attempts to attack the gods in heaven that Jupiter determined to halve them in order to weaken their strength. Taylor in a note to his translation refers to the fable as one "which I doubt not is of greater antiquity than Plato." 2

With this fable Emerson blends an account of the use of brothers which Plutarch gives in his essay, Of Brotherly Love. "And Nature hath given us very near examples of the use of brothers, by contriving most of the necessary parts of our bodies double, as it were, brothers and twins-as hands, feet, ears, nostrils-— thereby telling us that all these were thus distinguished for mutual benefit and assistance, and not for variance and discord. And when she parted the very hands into many and un

1 Bohn translation, III., 508-509.

2 The Works of Plato, III., 475, note I.

equal fingers, she made them thereby the most curious and artificial of all our members; in so much that the ancient philosopher Anaxagoras assigned the hands for the reason of all human knowledge and discretion. But the contrary seems the truth. For it is not man's having hands that makes him the wisest animal, but his being naturally reasonable and capable of art was the reason why such organs were conferred upon him. And this also is most manifest to every one, that the reason why Nature out of one seed and source formed two, three, and more brethren was not for difference and opposition, but that their being apart might render them the more capable of assisting one another. For those that were treble-bodied and hundred-handed, if any such there were, while they had all their members joined to each other could do nothing without them or apart.'

From Plato, then, Emerson got the idea of the gods dividing man into men; from Plutarch came the reason for the division, namely, to make man more helpful to himself; and from the same source came the simile of the division of the hands into fingers. Taylor's note 1 Plutarch, Morals, III., 37.

formed the basis for the assignment of the fable to an unknown antiquity. Emerson's own mind fused these elements into a version quite his own. He uses it to point the moral he is inculcating; that in the various occupations in which in the divided or social state men are engaged, it is man acting now in one function, now in another; in no one is the entire man but only a part of him. Hence he treats the scholar, his topic in hand, as man thinking. It is an idea that suggests the doctrine of Universal Mind; but that is present entire to each man, whereas the One Man is present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty. Emerson, however, applies the doctrine in a way that shows the theory to be identical with his doctrine of Universal Mind. "It is remarkable," he observes, "the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. They impress us with the conviction that one nature wrote and the same reads But for the evidence thence afforded to the philosophical doctrine of the identity of all minds, we should suppose some pre-established harmony, some foresight of souls that were to be, and some preparation of stores for their future wants, like the fact