Commentary on Plato's Symposium

no. Having therefore the mind, sight, and hearing, with which alone we can enjoy beauty, and since love is the desire to enjoy that, and is satisfied with the mind, with the eyes, and with the ears, why smell more? Why taste more? Why touch more? Seeing that these three senses recognize only odors, flavors, heat, cold, the soft, the hard, and similar things, and none of them is human beauty because they are simple forms, and the beauty of the human body requires a concordance of diverse members. Love, as it tends toward the enjoyment of beauty as its end—which belongs to the mind, to sight, and to hearing—in these three, therefore, love ends, and the appetite that follows the other senses rests. It cannot be called love, but rather lust and madness. Furthermore, if love toward humans desires nothing other than beauty, and beauty is placed in a certain unity of the body, and this union is tempered, love therefore desires only those things that are tempered, modest, and beautiful. The pleasures of taste and touch, which are so unbridled and furious that they remove the mind from its state and disturb the man, love not only does not desire, but abhors and flees, as things contrary to beauty because of their intemperance. Lustful rage pulls another toward intemperance, and through that to disunity: for which reason it seems that it similarly lures one to ugliness, but love pulls us toward beauty. Beauty and ugliness are contrary; therefore, the movements that pull us toward them appear contrary to each other. Whence lust, a lascivious union, and love are not only not the same movements, but they show themselves to be entirely contrary. The ancient theologians affirm this,