usbandman will not seriously
incline to sow his seed in such a hot-bed or garden of Adonis; he will
rather sow in the natural soil of the human soul which has depth of
earth; and he will anticipate the inner growth of the mind, by writing
only, if at all, as a remedy against old age. The natural process will
be far nobler, and will bring forth fruit in the minds of others as well
as in his own.

The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,--that until a man knows
the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other
men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than
the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when
delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man's own
bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others.
Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain
become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators,
we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these
principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but
philosophers. All others are mere flatterers and putters together of
words. This is the message which Phaedrus undertakes to carry to Lysias
from the local deities, and Socrates himself will carry a similar
message to his favourite Isocrates, whose future distinction as a great
rhetorician he prophesies. The heat of the day has passed, and after
offering up a prayer to Pan and the nymphs, Socrates and Phaedrus
depart.

There are two principal controversies which have been raised about the
Phaedrus; the first relates to the subject, the second to the date of
the Dialogue.

There seems to be a notion that the work of a great artist like Plato
cannot fail in unity, and that the unity of a dialogue requires a single
subject. But the conception of unity really applies in very different
degrees and ways to different kinds of art; to a statue, for example,
far more than to any kind of literary composition, and to some species
of literature far more than to others. Nor does the dialogue appear
to be a style of composition in which the requirement of unity is most
stringent; nor should the idea of unity derived from one sort of art
be hastily transferred to another. The double titles of several of the
Platonic Dialogues are a further proof that the severer rule was not
observed by Plato. The Republic is divided between the search after
justice and