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Updated: May 16, 2025
There is nothing more tragic in history than the spectacle of this man of unparalleled administrative and political genius, fettered by the past, and at length grown desperate, abandoning himself to his weird. The march into Russia is the return upon the daimonic spirit of its primitive instincts.
The growing and increasing force within him is his daimonic element, that within him which pushes out beyond himself. "Man's daimon is his destiny." Thus strikingly does Heraclitus make reference to this fact. He extends man's vital essence far beyond the personal.
The personality is the vehicle of the daimon, which is not confined within the limit of the personality, and for which the birth and death of the personality are of no importance. What is the relation of the daimonic element to the personality which comes and goes? The personality is only a form for the manifestation of the daimon.
This passage in the Symposium is highly suggestive. Who is the "wise woman" who awakened the daimon in Socrates? She is more than a merely poetic mode of expression. For no wise woman on the physical plane could awaken the daimon in the soul, unless the daimonic force were latent in the soul itself. It is surely in Socrates' own soul that we must also look for this "wise woman."
One who has arrived at this knowledge looks beyond himself, backwards and forwards. The daimonic experiences through which he has passed are enough to prove to him his own immortality. And he can no longer limit his daimon to the one function of occupying his personality, for the latter can only be one of the forms in which the daimon is manifested.
The vibrations were too strong, and shattered him. Think of Keats . . . and of thousands of others, poets, musicians, artists. Where you get the grand creations, the unfitful shining, there you get evidence of a balance: with genius the daimonic force no greater than, perhaps not so keen as, that of those others, you find a strong moral will.
Then the nation goes to pieces till some strong ruffian without a scruple puts it together again." "What do you mean by the Demiurge?" He laughed. "Why do you make me explain my flights? Well, I suppose, the natural daimonic power in things, which keeps them going and set them off; which is not us, or like us, and cares nothing for us."
It is significant that Socrates does not claim to be giving his own thoughts when speaking of love. He says he is only relating what a woman once imparted to him as a revelation. It was through mantic art that he came to his conception of love. Diotima, the priestess, awakened in Socrates the daimonic force which was to lead him to the divine. She initiated him.
One who becomes conscious of the daimonic element within him does not recognise it as innocent and in its first stage. He finds that it has qualities. Whence do they come? Why have I certain natural aptitudes? Because others have already worked upon my daimon. And what becomes of the work which I accomplish in the daimon if I am not to assume that its task ends with my personality?
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