Part 7 (1/2)
YOUNG SOCRATES: Surely not.
STRANGER: Had we not reason just to now to apprehend, that although we may have described a sort of royal form, we have not as yet accurately worked out the true image of the Statesman? and that we cannot reveal him as he truly is in his own nature, until we have disengaged and separated him from those who hang about him and claim to share in his prerogatives?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very true.
STRANGER: And that, Socrates, is what we must do, if we do not mean to bring disgrace upon the argument at its close.
YOUNG SOCRATES: We must certainly avoid that.
STRANGER: Then let us make a new beginning, and travel by a different road.
YOUNG SOCRATES: What road?
STRANGER: I think that we may have a little amus.e.m.e.nt; there is a famous tale, of which a good portion may with advantage be interwoven, and then we may resume our series of divisions, and proceed in the old path until we arrive at the desired summit. Shall we do as I say?
YOUNG SOCRATES: By all means.
STRANGER: Listen, then, to a tale which a child would love to hear; and you are not too old for childish amus.e.m.e.nt.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Let me hear.
STRANGER: There did really happen, and will again happen, like many other events of which ancient tradition has preserved the record, the portent which is traditionally said to have occurred in the quarrel of Atreus and Thyestes. You have heard, no doubt, and remember what they say happened at that time?
YOUNG SOCRATES: I suppose you to mean the token of the birth of the golden lamb.
STRANGER: No, not that; but another part of the story, which tells how the sun and the stars once rose in the west, and set in the east, and that the G.o.d reversed their motion, and gave them that which they now have as a testimony to the right of Atreus.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes; there is that legend also.
STRANGER: Again, we have been often told of the reign of Cronos.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, very often.
STRANGER: Did you ever hear that the men of former times were earth-born, and not begotten of one another?
YOUNG SOCRATES: Yes, that is another old tradition.
STRANGER: All these stories, and ten thousand others which are still more wonderful, have a common origin; many of them have been lost in the lapse of ages, or are repeated only in a disconnected form; but the origin of them is what no one has told, and may as well be told now; for the tale is suited to throw light on the nature of the king.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Very good; and I hope that you will give the whole story, and leave out nothing.
STRANGER: Listen, then. There is a time when G.o.d himself guides and helps to roll the world in its course; and there is a time, on the completion of a certain cycle, when he lets go, and the world being a living creature, and having originally received intelligence from its author and creator, turns about and by an inherent necessity revolves in the opposite direction.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Why is that?
STRANGER: Why, because only the most divine things of all remain ever unchanged and the same, and body is not included in this cla.s.s. Heaven and the universe, as we have termed them, although they have been endowed by the Creator with many glories, partake of a bodily nature, and therefore cannot be entirely free from perturbation. But their motion is, as far as possible, single and in the same place, and of the same kind; and is therefore only subject to a reversal, which is the least alteration possible. For the lord of all moving things is alone able to move of himself; and to think that he moves them at one time in one direction and at another time in another is blasphemy. Hence we must not say that the world is either self-moved always, or all made to go round by G.o.d in two opposite courses; or that two G.o.ds, having opposite purposes, make it move round. But as I have already said (and this is the only remaining alternative) the world is guided at one time by an external power which is divine and receives fresh life and immortality from the renewing hand of the Creator, and again, when let go, moves spontaneously, being set free at such a time as to have, during infinite cycles of years, a reverse movement: this is due to its perfect balance, to its vast size, and to the fact that it turns on the smallest pivot.
YOUNG SOCRATES: Your account of the world seems to be very reasonable indeed.
STRANGER: Let us now reflect and try to gather from what has been said the nature of the phenomenon which we affirmed to be the cause of all these wonders. It is this.