Phædrus

Phædrus spent an inordinate amount of time chatting with Socrates, and failed to impress him with much... Socrates actually thought he was the most unevolved souls state there is...

Then along came Zen. And Pirsig made Phædrus his alter-ego, the "dad" of a journey nowhere. Suddenly, Phædrus becomes more evolved and acutely realised: he's the throwback to our real selves, the "pure" soul state.

Funny how two points in time make the same thing more or less yearned-for. Socrates saw what we could become, by the time Pirsig wrote his two cents, we'd "become" so much we'd forgotten what we truly were at the start.