INTRODUCTION.

The human mind’s connection to ideas, its faith in the invisible, and its adoration of the eternal nature are all included, consciously or unconsciously, in Plato’s doctrine of love.

The successive speeches in praise of love are characteristic of the speakers and contribute in various degrees to the final result; they are all designed to prepare the way for Socrates, who gathers up the threads anew and touches upon the highest points of each. However, they should not be regarded as stages of an idea, rising one above another to a climax. They are fanciful, partly facetious performances—"yet also having a certain degree of seriousness"—which the speakers dedicate to the god. All of them are rhetorical and poetic rather than dialectical, yet glimpses of truth appear in them. When Eryximachus says that the principles of music are simple in themselves but confused in their application, he touches lightly upon a difficulty that has troubled moderns as well as ancients regarding music, and this observation may be extended to other applied sciences. The feeling that confusion begins in the concrete was the natural sentiment of a mind dwelling in the world of ideas. When Pausanias remarks that personal attachments are inimical to despots, the experience of Greek history confirms his observation. When Aristophanes declares that love is the "desire of the whole," he expresses a feeling not unlike that of the German philosopher who says that "philosophy is homesickness." When Agathon says that no man "can be wronged of his own free will," he is alluding playfully to a serious problem of Greek philosophy (compare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, v. 9). So naturally does Plato mingle jest and earnest, truth and opinion in the same work.

The characters—Phaedrus, who has been the cause of more philosophical discussions than any other man except Simmias the Theban; Aristophanes, who disguises a serious purpose under comic imagery; Agathon, who in later life is satirized by Aristophanes in the Thesmophoriazusae for his effeminate manners and the feeble rhythms of his verse; and Alcibiades, who presents the same strange contrast of great powers and great vices that we encounter in history—are drawn to the life. We may suppose the less-known characters of Pausanias and Eryximachus to be equally true to the traditional recollections of them. We may also remark that Aristodemus is called "the little" in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (1.4).