Under the aspect of truth he likens our knowledge of the ideal
to that which the prisoners of the cave had of the shadows on the wall;
under the aspect of beauty he figures our love for it as that of the
passionate lover. As truth, again,--taking up in his earliest days what
seems the primitive impulse and first thought of man everywhere and at
all times,--under the image of the golden chain let down from the
throne of the god, he sets forth the heavenly origin of the ideal and
its descent on earth by divine inspiration possessing the poet as its
passive instrument; and later, bringing in now the cooperation of man in
the act, he again presents the ideal as known by reminiscence of the
soul's eternal life before birth, which is only a more defined and
rationalized conception of inspiration working normally instead of by
the special act and favour of God. As beauty, again, he shows forth the
enthusiasm evoked by the ideal in the image of the charioteer of the
white and black horses mastering them to the goal of love. In these
various ways the first idealist thought out these distinctions of truth
and beauty as having a real community, though a divided life in the mind
and heart; and, as he developed,--and this is the significant
matter,--the poet in him controlling his speech told ever more
eloquently of the charm with which beauty draws the soul unto itself,
for to the poet beauty is nearer than truth.
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