Consider Socrates’s use of seed and other tree-growing images in his discussion of rhetoric.

Phaedrus is a philosophical dialogue that answers multiple questions about man’s reality. In the rhetoric that Plato uses in the text, seed and tree metaphors are especially significant. He compares a human to a heavenly plant, both of which are considered superior to an earthly tree, which has its seed grounded at the bottom in the soil. Plato’s central concept is that although human consciousness originates in the mind, it has the ability to conceive ideas that relate to the entire universe. Such an ability is most significant for Plato to consider humans as the most intelligent living form.