Penelope's Secret by Nicolas Ségur

Author:Nicolas Ségur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2019-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

VII. The Celestial Abode

“By the expression on your face I recognize that you are agitating in perplexity,” Socrates said the following day and they were going down the hill of the Pnyx slowly.

“Great problems are, indeed, haunting me,” Plato replied, “surging forth in my mind one after another, and I feel as if I am lost in their meanders.”

“Let us make our way together through the detours of those problems, then,” said the master. “It’s possible that in both making use of our eyes and rubbing our ideas together we might arrive at glimpsing some clarity, a enlightenment, in the same way that putting two pieces of wood in contact can cause a spark to spring forth.”

“And perhaps,” Plato completed, “while juggling with words, we will both end up receiving a vision of life, and even of reality.”

They sat down next to a field of asphodels with tender, slightly funeral hues.

Plato’s face was grave. The ephebe seemed suddenly to have entered into virility, as if the knowledge of amour, extracting him from his tender years, had suddenly ripened him and placed him in the very heart of life.

“This is what is happening to me, Socrates,” he said. “I was initiated to amour in proximity with the rhythm and the music that emerge from the soul of Aspasia. And by virtue of having known the glare of tender passion, I feel as if I were lost in a new ignorance. The world has enlarged before me, and by that very fact, the problems of the world have multiplied. Glimpsing other, unexpected difficulties, I feel troubled more than ever by the enigma that is the universe, by the enigma that is life.”

“The state in which you find yourself, very dear one, appears to me to be excellent,” replied Socrates, smiling. “I have experienced it myself many times. The road of wisdom is thus made. At every height that one reaches, one immediately perceives an even higher summit, surrounded by darkness, which it is a matter of attaining. For that reason, life is a perpetual effort of knowledge, and old age itself is an apprenticeship.”

“To know! That is the ardent desire that possesses me. Having penetrated amour, I feel thirsty also to reveal the goal of life, the why of things.”

“That is already a result acquired, and a precious result,” Socrates approved. “The thirst that is devouring you is, moreover, necessary. If, in fact, you do not learn the why of things and the goal of life, you will not be able to determine the place and the importance of amour, of that marvelous sentiment to which you have been initiated, for one only truly knows something when one has perceived its relationship with the whole. You have felt amour and its mystery, but amour will continue to propose new enigmas to you so long as you have not determined the fashion in which it serves the divine design, and the harmony that it contributes to the universal concert.”

“Yes, after amour, and as

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.