Plato dreamed a lot, and people have dreamed no less since. It has seemed to him that human nature was once double, and that as a punishment for its faults it was divided into male and female.
He had proved that there can be only five perfect worlds, because there are only five regular bodies in mathematics. His Republic was one of his great dreams. He had also dreamed that sleep is born out of waking and waking out of sleep, and that we are sure to lose our eyesight if we look at an eclipse elsewhere than in a pool of water. In those days dreams gave a man a great reputation.
Here is one of his dreams, which is not one of the least interesting. It seemed to him that the great Demiurge, the eternal Geometrician, having populated infinite space with innumerable globes, decided to test the knowledge of the genii who had been witnesses of his works. He gave each of them a little piece of matter to arrange, much as Phidias and Zeuxis might have given their disciples statues and pictures to make, if it is permissible to compare small things with great.
Demogorgon [A mysterious, terrible, and evil divinity] had as his share the bit of mud that is called Earth; and, having arranged it in the manner that we see today, he claimed to have made a masterpiece. He thought he had triumphed over envy, and was expecting praise, even from his colleagues; he was quite surprised to be received by them with hoots.
One of them, who was a very bad joker, said to him:
“Truly, you have worked very well: you have separated your world in two, and you have put a great space of water between the two hemispheres, so that there should be no communication between the two. They will freeze with cold at your two poles, they will die of heat at your equinoctial line. You have prudently established great deserts of sand, so that those who cross them may die of hunger and thrist. I am fairly content with your sheep, cows, and hens; but frankly I am none too much so with your snakes and spiders. Your onions and artichokes are very good things; but I don’t see what your idea was in covering the earth with so many venomous plants, unless you had the intention of poisoning the inhabitants. Moreover it seems to me that you have formed about thirty kinds of monkeys, many more kinds of dogs, and only four or five kinds of men: it is true that you have given this last animal what you call reason; but in all conscience, that reason of his is too ridiculous and comes too close to madness. Moreover it appears to me that you set no great store by that two-footed animal, since you have given him so many enemies and so little defense, so many maladies and so few remedies, so many passions and so little wisdom. Apparently you do not want many of those animals to remain on earth; for, without counting the dangers to which you expose them, you have done your calculating so well that someday the smallpox will carry off regularly every year the tenth part of this species, and the sister of this smallpox [the pox, or syphilis] will poison the source of life in the remaining nine-tenths; and as if that were still not enough, you have so arranged things that half the survivors will be occupied in pleading suits, the other half in killing each other; no doubt they will be very much obliged to you, and that’s a fine masterpiece you have made.”
Demogorgon blushed: he fully sensed that there was moral evil and physical evil in the work he had done, but he maintained that there was more good than evil.
“It is easy to criticize,” said he; “but do you think it is so easy to make an animal that is always reasonable, that is free, and that never abuses its liberty? Do you think that when a person has nine or ten thousand plants to cause to multiply, he can so easily keep some of these plants from having harmful qualities? Do you imagine that with a certain quantity of water, sand, mud, and fire, one can have neither sea nor desert? You, sir, who like to laugh, you have just arranged the planet Mars; we shall see how you made out with your two great bands, and what a fine effect your moonless nights make; we shall see whether among your people there is neither madness nor illness.”
Indeed, the genii examined Mars, and they fell roughly upon the mocker. The serious genie who had molded Saturn was not spared; his colleagues, the makers of Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, each had reproaches to take.
They wrote fat volumes and pamphlets; they said witty things; they composed songs; they made each other look ridiculous; the factions grew bitter; finally the eternal Demiurge imposed silence on them all:
“You have made,” he said to them, “some things good and some bad, because you have much intelligence and because you are imperfect; your works will last only a few hundreds of millions of years, after which, having learned more, you will do better: it belongs to me alone to make things perfect and immortal.”
This is what Plato was teaching his disciples. When he had finished speaking, one of them said to him: “And then you awoke.”
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