In the dialogue Phaedrus, Plato brilliantly compares human beings to charioteers driving the two horses of our human nature: our soul of reason and our irrational animal passions. The charioteer’s task “is difficult and troublesome,” he says, as we try to give the lead to the one and rein in the other. But if we do it well, we will live a virtuous life and reach the goal of every wise man and “in the course of [our] journey” behold “absolute justice and discipline and knowledge” before the soul “withdraws again within the vault of heaven and goes home.”
