The Symposium of Plato

(3) As to his origin, Eros is the son of Poros Poros Literally "Plenty" or "Resource." and Penia Penia Literally "Poverty" or "Need.", and partakes of the nature of both parents—the fertile vigor of the one, the wastrel neediness of the other. As he is a mean between the mortal and the immortal, so he is a mean between the wise and the unwise—that is, a wisdom-lover (philosopher). The notion that Eros is a beautiful god is due to a confusion between the subjective experience of Eros and the object loved.

B. The effects, or utility, of Eros, 204 D—212 A.

(1) The object or end of Eros.
What does Eros as "love of the beautiful" precisely imply? In the case of the good, its acquisition is a means to happiness as an end. But Eros is not used in this generic sense of "desire for happiness," so much as in a narrower specific sense. If we say that Eros is "the desire for the good," we must expand this definition into "the desire for the everlasting possession of the good."

(2) The method or mode of action of Eros.
Eros works by means of generation, both physical and psychical, in the beautiful.

(a) Generation, being an immortal thing, requires harmony with the divine—that is, beauty—without which the process is hindered. Generation is sought because it is, for mortals, the nearest approach to immortality. It is in the desire for immortality that we must find the explanation of all the sexual passion and love of offspring which we see in the animal world, since it is only by leaving a successor to take its place that the mortal creature, in this world of constant change, can secure a kind of perpetuity.

(b) But the soul has its offspring as well as the body. Laws, inventions, and noble deeds, which spring from love of fame, have for their motive the same passion for immortality. The lover seeks a beautiful soul in order to generate therein offspring which shall live forever; and the bonds of such soul-marriages are stronger than any carnal ties.

(c) After this elementary prelude, we reach the highest stage of the Mysteries of Love. The right method in erotic procedure is to pass in upward course from love of bodily beauty to love of soul beauty, thence to the beauty of the sciences, until finally one science is reached which corresponds to the Absolute, Ideal Beauty, in which all finite things of beauty partake. To gain the vision of this is the goal of Love's endeavor, and to live in its presence were life indeed. There, if anywhere, with truth for the issue of his soul, might the lover hope to attain to immortality.