SYMPOSIUM.

mythology and the opinions of men. From Phaedrus, he takes the thought that love is stronger than death; from Pausanias, that true love is related to the intellect and political activity; from Eryximachus, that love is a universal phenomenon and a great power of nature; from Aristophanes, that love is the child of want, and is not merely the love of what is compatible or of the whole, but (as he adds) of the good; from Agathon, that love is of beauty—though not beauty alone, but of birth in beauty.

The speech of the day begins with a short argument that overthrows not only Agathon but all of them, with the help of a distinction they had overlooked. Extravagant praises have been ascribed to Love as the author of every good; no sort of eulogy was too high for him, whether deserved or not. But Socrates has no talent for speaking anything but the truth. If he is to speak the truth about Love, he must honestly confess that Love is not good at all, for love is of the good, and no man can desire that which he already possesses. This piece of dialectic is ascribed to Diotima, who had already urged upon Socrates the argument he now urges against Agathon. That this distinction is a fallacy is obvious; for he who possesses beauty or goodness may still desire more of them, and he who has beauty or goodness within himself may desire beauty and goodness in others. The fallacy seems to arise from a confusion between the abstract ideas of good and beauty—which do not admit of degrees—and their partial realization in individuals.

But Diotima, the prophetess of Mantineia, whose sacred and superhuman character raises her above the ordinary conventions of women, has taught Socrates far more than this about the art and mystery of love. She has taught him that love is another aspect of philosophy. The same "want" in the human soul that is satisfied in the common person by the procreation of children may become the highest aspiration of intellectual desire. Just as a Christian might speak of "hungering and thirsting after righteousness," or of divine loves under the figure of human ones Compare Ephesians 5:32: "This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church."; just as a medieval saint might speak of the fruitio Dei Original: "fruitio Dei" — the enjoyment of God.; or as Dante saw all things contained in his love of Beatrice, so Plato would have us absorb all other loves and desires into the love of knowledge. Here is the beginning of Neoplatonism, or rather, perhaps, a proof (of which there are many) that the so-called mysticism of the East was not strange to the Greek of the fifth century before Christ. The first tumult...