Complete Works of Plutarch Part 57

To bring home my body again.

And (O. xxiv. 187):--

The bodies lie uncared for in the hall of Odysseus.

O. xi. 53:--

And we left the body in the house of Circe.

For the same thing, while a man lives, was the bond of the soul; when he dies it is left, as it were, his monument.

To this is related also another doctrine of Pythagoras, namely, that the souls of the dead pa.s.s into other forms of bodies. This did not escape Homer's notice, for he made Hector talking with horses, and Antilochus and Achilles himself not only talking with them but listening to them, and a dog recognizing Odysseus before men, even before his intimates.

What other thing is he establishing but a community of speech and a relation of soul between men and beasts? Besides, there are those who ate up the oxen of the Sun and after this fell into destruction. Does he not show that not only oxen but all other living creatures, as sharers of the same common nature, are beloved by the G.o.ds?

The change of the comrades of Odysseus into swine and that type of animal signifies this, that the souls of undeserving men are changed into the likeness of brute beasts; they fall into the circular periphery of the whole, which he calls Circe; whereas she is justly represented as the child of the Sun, dwelling in the island of Aeaea, for this word [Greek omitted] is so called because men lament and wail by reason of death. But the prudent man Odysseus did not suffer the change, because from Hermes, i.e. reason, he had received immortality. He went down into Hades, as it were, dissolving and separating the soul from the body, and became a spectator of souls both good and bad.

The Stoics define the soul as a cognate spirit, sensible to exhalations.

It has its origin from the humid portions of the body. In this they follow Homer, who says (I. ix. 609).--

While the breath abides in the breast.

And again (I. xxiii. 100):--

Vanish'd like smoke, the spirit beneath the earth.

Here he makes the vital spirit, being humid, a breath; when it is extinguished he likens it to smoke. And the word "spirit" itself he uses for soul (I. xv. 262):--

His words fresh vigor in the chief infus'd.

And (I. iv. 524):--

Breathing away his spirit.

And (I. xxii. 475):--

But when her breath and spirit returned again.

That is, she collected her distracted spirit (I. v. 697):--

But soon revived, as on his forehead blew, While yet he gasped for breath, the cooling breeze.

While his spirit was failing him in a faint, the outside breeze having a natural affinity to it brought him back to life. This argument is strengthened because for the external spirit he uses the word "soul,"

saying (I. xxiii. 440):--

He turned aside with lightest breath.

He wishes to say: "Having got back his breath."

Plato and Aristotle considered the soul incorporeal, but always a.s.sociating with the body and needing it as a vehicle. On this account, then, it drew along the spiritual matter with it, oftentimes as an image, which had the shape of the body impressed upon it. So therefore Homer is never in his poetry found calling the soul body, but to what is deprived of soul he always gives the name, as we have mentioned in what has gone before.

The soul has, according to the views of the philosophers, a rational part, seated in the head, and an irrational part of which one element, the pa.s.sionate, dwells in the heart and another, the appet.i.tive, in the intestines. Did not Homer see this distinction when he made in the case of Achilles, the rational struggling with the pa.s.sionate, deliberating in the same moment whether he should drive off the one who had filled him with grief or should stay his anger (I. i. 193):--

Up to this time he revolved these things in his mind and heart,

that is, the intelligent part and what is opposed to it? The emotional anger is represented by him as overcome by prudence. For the appearance of Athene signifies this. And in these places he makes reason admonish the emotions, as a ruler giving orders to a subject (O. xx. 18):--

Endure my heart; yea, a baser thing thou once didst bear.

And often the pa.s.sionate element gives way to reason (I. xx. 22):--

Pallas indeed sat silent and though inly wroth with Jove, yet answered not a word.

Likewise injury (I. xviii. 112):--

Though still my heart be sore, Yet will I school my angry spirit down.

Sometimes he shows the pa.s.sionate element getting the better of reason.

This he does not praise, but openly blames; as when Nestor speaks upbraiding the insult offered by Agamemnon to Achilles (I. ix. 108):--

Not by my advice I fain would have dissuaded thee; but thou, Swayed by the promptings of a lofty soul, Didst to our bravest wrong dishonoring him Whom ev'n the Immortals honor'd.

Achilles speaks like things to Ajax (I. ix. 645):--

All thou hast said hath semblance just and fair, But swells my heart with fury at the thought of him, Of Agamemnon, who, amid the Greeks a.s.sembled, held me forth to scorn.

So, too, reason is paralysed by fear, where Hector deliberates whether he will abide the conflict with Achilles (I. xxii. 129):--

Better to dare the fight and know at once To whom Olympian Jove the triumph wills,

Then he withdraws when he gets near Achilles (I. xxii. 136):--

Nor dared he there await th' attack, but left The gates behind, and terror-stricken fled.

It is also plain that he places the emotions about the heart. Anger as (O. xx. 13):--

The heart within barked for him.

Grief (I. xiv. 128):--

How long, my son, wilt thou thy soul consume with grief an mourning?

Then fear (I. x. 95):--

And leaps my troubled heart as tho' it would burst My bosom's bounds; my limbs beneath me shake.

In the same way just as fear, so he declares daring to be about the heart (I. xvi. 11):--

And fix'd in every breast The fierce resolve to wage unwearied war.