known the nature of God, may imagine an immortal
creature having both a body and also a soul which are united throughout
all time. Let that, however, be as God wills, and be spoken of
acceptably to him. And now let us ask the reason why the soul loses her
wings!

The wing is the corporeal element which is most akin to the divine,
and which by nature tends to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates
downwards into the upper region, which is the habitation of the gods.
The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the
wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when fed upon evil
and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls away. Zeus, the
mighty lord, holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in
heaven, ordering all and taking care of all; and there follows him the
array of gods and demi-gods, marshalled in eleven bands; Hestia alone
abides at home in the house of heaven; of the rest they who are reckoned
among the princely twelve march in their appointed order. They see many
blessed sights in the inner heaven, and there are many ways to and fro,
along which the blessed gods are passing, every one doing his own
work; he may follow who will and can, for jealousy has no place in the
celestial choir. But when they go to banquet and festival, then they
move up the steep to the top of the vault of heaven. The chariots of
the gods in even poise, obeying the rein, glide rapidly; but the others
labour, for the vicious steed goes heavily, weighing down the charioteer
to the earth when his steed has not been thoroughly trained:--and
this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict for the soul. For the
immortals, when they are at the end of their course, go forth and stand
upon the outside of heaven, and the revolution of the spheres carries
them round, and they behold the things beyond. But of the heaven which
is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing
worthily? It is such as I will describe; for I must dare to speak the
truth, when truth is my theme. There abides the very being with which
true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible
essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine
intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the
intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper
to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth,
is replenished and made glad,