Jowett: vision

Soc. But I do not think that the ship will be here until to-morrow ; this I gather from a vision which I had last night, or rather only just now, when you fortunately allowed me to sleep. CRITO  

Cr. And what was the nature of the vision ? CRITO

In such cases as this : Suppose that there is a kind of vision which is not like ordinary vision, but a vision of itself and of other sorts of vision, and of the defect of them, which in seeing sees no colour, but only itself and other sorts of vision : Do you think that there is such a kind of vision ? CHARMIDES  

Upon entering we found that the boys had just been sacrificing ; and this part of the festival was nearly at an end. They were all in their white array, and games at dice were going on among them. Most of them were in the outer court amusing themselves ; but some were in a corner of the Apodyterium playing at odd and even with a number of dice, which they took out of little wicker baskets. There was also a circle of lookers-on ; among them was Lysis  . He was standing with the other boys and youths, having a crown upon his head, like a fair vision, and not less worthy of praise for his goodness than for his beauty. We left them, and went over to the opposite side of the room, where, finding a quiet place, we sat down ; and then we began to talk. This attracted Lysis, who was constantly turning round to look at us — he was evidently wanting to come to us. For a time he hesitated and had not the courage to come alone ; but first of all, his friend Menexenus  , leaving his play, entered the Palaestra from the court, and when he saw Ctesippus and myself, was going to take a seat by us ; and then Lysis, seeing him, followed, and sat down by his side ; and the other boys joined. I should observe that Hippothales, when he saw the crowd, got behind them, where he thought that he would be out of sight of Lysis, lest he should anger him ; and there he stood and listened. LYSIS

And do the Scythians and others see that which has the quality of vision, or that which has not ? said Euthydemus  . EUTHYDEMUS

That which has the quality of vision clearly. EUTHYDEMUS

And you also see that which has the quality Of vision ? he said. EUTHYDEMUS

Then our garments have the quality of vision. EUTHYDEMUS

"These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates  , may enter ; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of these, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do my utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms ; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only — out of that he should create fair thoughts ; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another ; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is and the same ! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms ; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle ; and after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom ; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed ; please to give me your very best attention : SYMPOSIUM  

Or did you ever reach them with any other bodily sense ? (and I speak not of these alone, but of absolute greatness, and health, and strength, and of the essence or true nature of everything). Has the reality of them ever been perceived by you through the bodily organs ? or rather, is not the nearest approach to the knowledge of their several natures made by him who so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most exact conception of the essence of that which he considers ? PHAEDO  

Such is the life of the gods ; but of other souls, that which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being ; while another only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first ; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort ; and many of them are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers ; and all of them after a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of true being, go away, and feed upon opinion. The reason why the souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness to behold the plain of truth is that pasturage is found there, which is suited to the highest part of the soul ; and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this. And there is a law of Destiny, that the soul which attains any vision of truth in company with a god is preserved from harm until the next period, and if attaining always is always unharmed. But when she is unable to follow, and fails to behold the truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings fall from her and she drops to the ground, then the law ordains that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal, but only into man ; and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature ; that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be some righteous king or warrior chief ; the soul which is of the third class shall be a politician, or economist, or trader ; the fourth shall be lover of gymnastic toils, or a physician ; the fifth shall lead the life of a prophet or hierophant ; to the sixth the character of poet or some other imitative artist will be assigned ; to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman ; to the eighth that of a sophist or demagogue ; to the ninth that of a tyrant — all these are states of probation, in which he who does righteously improves, and he who does unrighteously, improves, and he who does unrighteously, deteriorates his lot. PHAEDRUS  

Thus far I have been speaking of the fourth and last kind of madness, which is imputed to him who, when he sees the beauty of earth, is transported with the recollection of the true beauty ; he would like to fly away, but he cannot ; he is like a bird fluttering and looking upward and careless of the world below ; and he is therefore thought to be mad. And I have shown this of all inspirations to be the noblest and highest and the offspring of the highest to him who has or shares in it, and that he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it. For, as has been already said, every soul of man has in the way of nature beheld true being ; this was the condition of her passing into the form of man. But all souls do not easily recall the things of the other world ; they may have seen them for a short time only, or they may have been unfortunate in their earthly lot, and, having had their hearts turned to unrighteousness through some corrupting influence, they may have lost the memory of the holy things which once they saw. Few only retain an adequate remembrance of them ; and they, when they behold here any image of that other world, are rapt in amazement ; but they are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they do not clearly perceive. For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them : they are seen through a glass dimly ; and there are few who, going to the images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty. There was a time when with the rest of the happy band they saw beauty shining in brightness — we philosophers following in the train of Zeus, others in company with other gods ; and then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining impure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in his shell. Let me linger over the memory of scenes which have passed away. PHAEDRUS

As I said at the beginning of this tale, I divided each soul into three — two horses and a charioteer ; and one of the horses was good and the other bad : the division may remain, but I have not yet explained in what the goodness or badness of either consists, and to that I will proceed. The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made ; he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose ; his colour is white, and his eyes dark ; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory ; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow ; he has a short thick neck ; he is flat-faced and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion ; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur. Now when the charioteer beholds the vision of love, and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full of the prickings and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed, then as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the beloved ; but the other, heedless of the pricks and of the blows of the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his companion and the charioteer, whom he forces to approach the beloved and to remember the joys of love. They at first indignantly oppose him and will not be urged on to do terrible and unlawful deeds ; but at last, when he persists in plaguing them, they yield and agree to do as he bids them. PHAEDRUS

Soc. Then now apply his doctrine to perception, my good friend, and first of all to vision ; that which you call white colour is not in your eyes, and is not a distinct thing which exists out of them. And you must not assign any place to it : for if it had position it would be, and be at rest, and there would be no process of becoming. THEAETETUS  

Soc. And thus, my friend, on every occasion, private as well as public, as I said at first, when he appears in a law-court, or in any place in which he has to speak of things which are at his feet and before his eyes, he is the jest, not only of Thracian handmaids but of the general herd, tumbling into wells and every sort of disaster through his inexperience. His awkwardness is fearful, and gives the impression of imbecility. When he is reviled, he has nothing personal to say in answer to the civilities of his adversaries, for he knows no scandals of any one, and they do not interest him ; and therefore he is laughed at for his sheepishness ; and when others are being praised and glorified, in the simplicity of his heart he cannot help going into fits of laughter, so that he seems to be a downright idiot. When he hears a tyrant or king eulogized, he fancies that he is listening to the praises of some keeper of cattle — a swineherd, or shepherd, or perhaps a cowherd, who is congratulated on the quantity of milk which he squeezes from them ; and he remarks that the creature whom they tend, and out of whom they squeeze the wealth, is of a less traitable and more insidious nature. Then, again, he observes that the great man is of necessity as ill-mannered and uneducated as any shepherd — for he has no leisure, and he is surrounded by a wall, which is his mountain-pen. Hearing of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth ; and when they sing the, praises of family, and say that someone is a gentleman because he can show seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments only betray a dull and narrow vision in those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had thousands and ten thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, innumerable. And when people pride themselves on having a pedigree of twenty-five ancestors, which goes back to Heracles, the son of Amphitryon, he cannot understand their poverty of ideas. Why are they unable to calculate that Amphitryon had a twenty-fifth ancestor, who might have been anybody, and was such as fortune made him and he had a fiftieth, and so on ? He amuses himself with the notion that they cannot count, and thinks that a little arithmetic would have got rid of their senseless vanity. Now, in all these cases our philosopher is derided by the vulgar, partly because he is thought to despise them, and also because he is ignorant of what is before him, and always at a loss. THEAETETUS

Soc. The only possibility of erroneous opinion is, when knowing you and Theodorus, and having on the waxen block the impression of both of you given as by a seal, but seeing you imperfectly and at a distance, I try to assign the right impression of memory to the right visual impression, and to fit this into its own print : if I succeed, recognition will take place ; but if I fad and transpose them, putting the foot into the wrong shoe — that is to say, putting the vision of either of you on to the wrong impression, or if my mind, like the sight in a mirror, which is transferred from right to left, err by reason of some similar affection, then "heterodoxy" and false opinion ensues. THEAETETUS

Str. And the philosopher, always holding converse through reason with the idea of being, is also dark from excess of light ; for the souls of the many have no eye which can endure the vision of the divine. SOPHIST

Y. Soc. Who are they ? You seem to be gazing on some strange vision. STATESMAN

And so in the vessel of the head, they first of all put a face in which they inserted organs to minister in all things to the providence of the soul, and they appointed this part, which has authority, to be by nature the part which is in front. And of the organs they first contrived the eyes to give light, and the principle according to which they were inserted was as follows : So much of fire as would not burn, but gave a gentle light, they formed into a substance akin to the light of every-day life ; and the pure fire which is within us and related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense, compressing the whole eye, and especially the centre part, so that it kept out everything of a coarser nature, and allowed to pass only this pure element. When the light of day surrounds the stream of vision, then like falls upon like, and they coalesce, and one body is formed by natural affinity in the line of vision, wherever the light that falls from within meets with an external object. And the whole stream of vision, being similarly affected in virtue of similarity, diffuses the motions of what it touches or what touches it over the whole body, until they reach the soul, causing that perception which we call sight. But when night comes on and the external and kindred fire departs, then the stream of vision is cut off ; for going forth to an unlike element it is changed and extinguished, being no longer of one nature with the surrounding atmosphere which is now deprived of fire : and so the eye no longer sees, and we feel disposed to sleep. For when the eyelids, which the gods invented for the preservation of sight, are closed, they keep in the internal fire ; and the power of the fire diffuses and equalises the inward motions ; when they are equalised, there is rest, and when the rest is profound, sleep comes over us scarce disturbed by dreams ; but where the greater motions still remain, of whatever nature and in whatever locality, they engender corresponding visions in dreams, which are remembered by us when we are awake and in the external world. And now there is no longer any difficulty in understanding the creation of images in mirrors and all smooth and bright surfaces. For from the communion of the internal and external fires, and again from the union of them and their numerous transformations when they meet in the mirror, all these appearances of necessity arise, when the fire from the face coalesces with the fire from the eye on the bright and smooth surface. And right appears left and left right, because the visual rays come into contact with the rays emitted by the object in a manner contrary to the usual mode of meeting ; but the right appears right, and the left left, when the position of one of the two concurring lights is reversed ; and this happens when the mirror is concave and its smooth surface repels the right stream of vision to the left side, and the left to the right. Or if the mirror be turned vertically, then the concavity makes the countenance appear to be all upside down, and the lower rays are driven upwards and the upper downwards. TIMAEUS  

Soc. And the fancies of hope are also pictured in us ; a man may often have a vision of a heap of gold, and pleasures ensuing, and in the picture there may be a likeness of himself mightily rejoicing over his good fortune. PHILEBUS  

Cle. Truly, Stranger, you see with the keen vision of age. LAWS BOOK IV

Ath. Why, yes ; every man when he is young has that sort of vision dullest, and when he is old keenest. LAWS BOOK IV

Now the gods — Zeus and Hera and all the rest — each man must regard in what light he pleases, though according to the same law, and must take this account as reliable. But as our visible gods, greatest and most honorable and having keenest vision every way, we must count first the order of the stars and all else that we perceive existing with them ; and after these, and [984e] next below these, the divine spirits, and air-born race, holding the third and middle situation, cause of interpretation, which we must surely honor with prayers for the sake of an auspicious journey across. We must say of either of these two creatures — that which is of ether and, next to it, of air — that it is not entirely plain to sight : when it is near by, it is not made manifest to us ; [985a] but partaking of extraordinary intelligence, as belonging to an order which is quick to learn and strong in memory, we may say that they understand the whole of our thoughts, and show extraordinary kindness to anyone of us who is a good man and true, and hate him who is utterly evil, as one who already partakes of suffering. For we know that God, who has the privilege of the divine portion, is remote from these affections of pain and pleasure, but has a share of intelligence and knowledge in every sphere ; and the heaven being filled full of live creatures, [985b] they interpret all men and all things both to one another and to the most exalted gods, because the middle creatures move both to earth and to the whole of heaven with a lightly rushing motion. The kind which is of water, the fifth, we shall be right in representing as a semi-divine product of that element, and it is at one time seen, but at another is concealed through becoming obscure, presenting a marvel in the dimness of vision. EPINOMIS   BOOK XII

In this way then let all these things come to pass, and so let them be. But as to their crowning point, we must go to divine generation and therewith the fairest and divinest nature of visible things, so far as God granted the vision of it to men ; a vision that none of us may ever boast of having received at his leisure [991c] without the conditions here laid down. And besides these requirements, one must refer the particular thing to its generic form in our various discussions, questioning and disproving what has been wrongly stated ; for it is rightly found to be altogether the finest and first of tests for the use of men, while any that pretend to be tests, without being so, are the vainest of all labors. And further, we must mark the exactness of time, how exactly it completes all the processes of the heavens, in order that he who is convinced of [991d] the truth of the statement which has been made — that the soul is at once older and more divine than the body — might believe it a most admirable and satisfactory saying that all things are full of gods, and that we have never been disregarded in the least through any forgetfulness or neglect in our superiors. And our view about all such matters must be that, if one conceives of each of them aright, it turns out a great boon to him who receives it in a proper way ; but failing this, he had better always call it God. The way is this — [991e] for it is necessary to explain it thus far : every diagram, and system of number, and every combination of harmony, and the agreement of the revolution of the stars must be made manifest as one through all to him who learns in the proper way, and will be made manifest if, as we say, a man learns aright by keeping his gaze on unity ; [992a] for it will be manifest to us, as we reflect, that there is one bond naturally uniting all these things : but if one goes about it in some other way, one must call it Fortune, as we also put it. EPINOMIS BOOK XII

Then is God perfectly simple and true both in word and deed ; he changes not ; he deceives not, either by sign or word, by dream or waking vision. THE REPUBLIC   BOOK II

We will not, I said, be over-positive as yet ; but if, on trial, this conception of justice be verified in the individual as well as in the State, there will be no longer any room for doubt ; if it be not verified, we must have a fresh inquiry. First let us complete the old investigation, which we began, as you remember, under the impression that, if we could previously examine justice on the larger scale, there would be less difficulty in discerning her in the individual. That larger example appeared to be the State, and accordingly we constructed as good a one as we could, knowing well that in the good State justice would be found. Let the discovery which we made be now applied to the individual — if they agree, we shall be satisfied ; or, if there be a difference in the individual, we will come back to the State and have another trial of the theory. The friction of the two when rubbed together may possibly strike a light in which justice will shine forth, and the vision which is then revealed we will fix in our souls. THE REPUBLIC BOOK IV

Yes, and the most ridiculous thing of all will be the sight of women naked in the palaestra, exercising with the men, especially when they are no longer young ; they certainly will not be a vision of beauty, any more than the enthusiastic old men who, in spite of wrinkles and ugliness, continue to frequent the gymnasia. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Those, I said, who are lovers   of the vision of truth. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

And are not those who are verily and indeed wanting in the knowledge of the true being of each thing, and who have in their souls no clear pattern, and are unable as with a painter’s eye to look at the absolute truth and to that original to repair, and having perfect vision of the other world to order the laws about beauty, goodness, justice in this, if not already ordered, and to guard and preserve the order of them — are not such persons, I ask, simply blind ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

Why, you know, I said, that the eyes, when a person directs them toward objects on which the light of day is no longer shining, but the moon and stars only, see dimly, and are nearly blind ; they seem to have no clearness of vision in them ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look toward the light, he will suffer sharp pains ; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows ; and then conceive someone saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned toward more real existence, he has a clearer vision — what will be his reply ? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them — will he not be perplexed ? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs ; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell ; which desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Anything but surprising, he replied. Anyone who has common-sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye ; and he who remembers this when he sees anyone whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh ; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other ; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of their youth ; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls upon the things that are below — if, I say, they had been released from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to now. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Yes, I said, but for that purpose a very little of either geometry or calculation will be enough ; the question relates rather to the greater and more advanced part of geometry — whether that tends in any degree to make more easy the vision of the idea of good ; and thither, as I was saying, all things tend which compel the soul to turn her gaze toward that place, where is the full perfection of being, which she ought, by all means, to behold. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII