Taylor - Eleusianian and Bacchic Mysteries.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

"BacchicMysteries.And this with the greatest propriety: foroblivion necessarily follows a remission ofintellectual action, and isas necessarily attended with the allurements of desire.*Noris her dress less symbolical of the acting of*When the person turns the back upon his higher faculties, anddisregards the communications which he receives through themfrom the world of unseen realities, an oblivion ensues of theirexistence, and the person is next brought within the province andoperation of lower and worldly ambitions, such as a love of power,passion for riches, sensual pleasure, etc.or apostasy of the soul,This is a descent, fall,a separation from the sources of divinelife and ravishment into the region of moral death.In the Phwdrus, in the allegory of the Chariot and WingedSteeds, Plato represents the lower or inferior part of man s natureas dragging the soul down to the earth, and subjecting it to theslavery of corporealconditions. Out of these conditions therearise numerous evils, that disorder the mind and becloud the reason, for evil is inherent to the condition of finite and multiformbeing into which we have "fallen by our own The fault."present earthly life is a fall and a punishment. The soul is nowdwelling in"the grave which we call the In its body." incorporate state, and previous to the discipline of education, the rational"element is asleep."Life is more of a dream than a reality."Men are utterly the slaves of sense, the sport of phantoms and"illusions. We now resemble those captives chained in a subterraneous so cave," poetically described in the seventh book of TheRepublic; their backs are turned to the light, and consequentlythey see but the shadows of the objects which pass behind them,"and they attribute to these shadows a perfect Theirreality."sojourn upon earth is thus a dark imprisonment in the body, adreamy exile from their proper home."Cocker s Greek Philosophy.