e knowledge which she attained when in the company of the Gods. And
men in general recall only with difficulty the things of another world,
but the mind of the philosopher has a better remembrance of them. For
when he beholds the visible beauty of earth his enraptured soul passes
in thought to those glorious sights of justice and wisdom and temperance
and truth which she once gazed upon in heaven. Then she celebrated holy
mysteries and beheld blessed apparitions shining in pure light, herself
pure, and not as yet entombed in the body. And still, like a bird eager
to quit its cage, she flutters and looks upwards, and is therefore
deemed mad. Such a recollection of past days she receives through sight,
the keenest of our senses, because beauty, alone of the ideas, has any
representation on earth: wisdom is invisible to mortal eyes. But the
corrupted nature, blindly excited by this vision of beauty, rushes on
to enjoy, and would fain wallow like a brute beast in sensual pleasures.
Whereas the true mystic, who has seen the many sights of bliss, when he
beholds a god-like form or face is amazed with delight, and if he were
not afraid of being thought mad he would fall down and worship. Then
the stiffened wing begins to relax and grow again; desire which has
been imprisoned pours over the soul of the lover; the germ of the wing
unfolds, and stings, and pangs of birth, like the cutting of teeth, are
everywhere felt. (Compare Symp.) Father and mother, and goods and laws
and proprieties are nothing to him; his beloved is his physician, who
can alone cure his pain. An apocryphal sacred writer says that the power
which thus works in him is by mortals called love, but the immortals
call him dove, or the winged one, in order to represent the force of
his wings--such at any rate is his nature. Now the characters of lovers
depend upon the god whom they followed in the other world; and they
choose their loves in this world accordingly. The followers of Ares
are fierce and violent; those of Zeus seek out some philosophical and
imperial nature; the attendants of Here find a royal love; and in like
manner the followers of every god seek a love who is like their god; and
to him they communicate the nature which they have received from their
god. The manner in which they take their love is as follows:--

I told you about the charioteer and his two steeds, the one a noble
animal who is guided by word and admonition only, the other an
ill-look