Platonicae quaestiones

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. V. Goodwin, William W., editor; Brown, R., translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

HOW COMES IT TO PASS THAT IN PHAEDRUS IT IS SAID, THAT THE NATURE OF A WING, BY WHICH ANY THING THAT IS HEAVY IS CARRIED UPWARDS, PARTICIPATES MOST OF THE BODY OF GOD?[*](See Phaedrus, p. 246 D.)

Is it because the discourse is of love, and love is of beauty inherent in a body? Now beauty, by similitude to things divine, moves and reminds the soul. Or it may be (without too much curiosity) he may be understood in plain meaning, to wit, that the several faculties of the soul being employed about bodies, the power of reasoning and understanding partakes most about divine and heavenly things; which he did not impertinently call a wing, it raising the soul from mean and mortal things to things above.