Symposium
their want. For love is the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the
whole is called love. There was a time when the two sexes were only one,
but now God has halved them,--much as the Lacedaemonians have cut up
the Arcadians,--and if they do not behave themselves he will divide
them again, and they will hop about with half a nose and face in basso
relievo. Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that we may obtain
the goods of which love is the author, and be reconciled to God, and
find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world. And now I
must beg you not to suppose that I am alluding to Pausanias and Agathon
(compare Protag.), for my words refer to all mankind everywhere.
Some raillery ensues first between Aristophanes and Eryximachus, and
then between Agathon, who fears a few select friends more than any
number of spectators at the theatre, and Socrates, who is disposed to
begin an argument. This is speedily repressed by Phaedrus, who reminds
the disputants of their tribute to the god. Agathon's speech follows:--
He will speak of the god first and then of his gifts: He is the fairest
and blessedest and best of the gods, and also the youngest, having had
no existence in the old days of Iapetus and Cronos when the gods were
at war. The things that were done then were done of necessity and not
of love. For love is young and dwells in soft places,--not like Ate
in Homer, walking on the skulls of men, but in their hearts and
souls, which are soft enough. He is all flexibility and grace, and his
habitation is among the flowers, and he cannot do or suffer wrong; for
all men serve and obey him of their own free will, and where there is
love there is obedience, and where obedience, there is justice; for
none can be wronged of his own free will. And he is temperate as well as
just, for he is the ruler of the desires, and if he rules them he must
be temperate. Also he is courageous, for he is the conqueror of the lord
of war. And he is wise too; for he is a poet, and the author of poesy in
others. He created the animals; he is the inventor of the arts; all the
gods are his subjects; he is the fairest and best himself, and the cause
of what is fairest and best in others; he makes men to be of one mind
at a banquet, filling them with affection and emptying them of
disaffection; the pilot, helper, defender, saviour of men, in whose
footsteps let every man follow, chanting a strain of love. Such is the
discourse, half playful, half serious, which I dedicate to the god.
The turn of Socrates comes next. He begins by remarking satirically
that he has not understood the terms of the original agreement, for he
fancied that they meant to speak the true praises of love, but now he
finds that they only say what is good of him, whether true or false. He
begs to be absolved from speaking falsely, but he is willing to speak
the truth, and proposes to begin by questioning Agathon. The result of
his questions may be summed up as follows:--
Love is of something, and that which love desires is not that which love
is or has; for no man desires that which he is or has. And love is of
the beautiful, and therefore has not the beautiful. And the beautiful
is the good, and therefore, in wanting and desiring the beautiful, love
also wants and desires the good. Socrates professes to have asked the
same questions and to have obtained the same answers from Diotima, a
wise woman of Mantinea, who, like Agathon, had spoken first of love and
then of his works. Socrates, like Agathon, had told her that Love is a
mighty god and also fair, and she had shown him in return that Love was
neither, but in a mean between fair and foul, good and evil, and not a
god at all, but only a great demon or intermediate power (compare the
speech of Eryximachus) who conveys to the gods the prayers of men, and
to men the commands of the gods.
Socrates asks: Who are his father and mother? To this Diotima replies
that he is the son of Plenty and Poverty, and partakes of the nature of
both, and is full and starved by turns. Like his mother he is poor and
squalid, lying on mats at doors (compare the speech of Pausanias);
like his father he is bold and strong, and full of arts and resources.
Further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge:--in this he
resembles the philosopher who is also in a mean between the wise and the
ignorant. Such is the nature of Love, who is not to be confused with the
beloved.
But Love desires the beautiful; and then arises the question, What does
he desire of the beautiful? He desires, of course, the possession of
the beautiful;--but what is given by that? For the beautiful let us
substitute the good, and we have no difficulty in seeing the possession
of the good to be happiness, and Love to be the desire of happiness,
although the meaning of the word has been too often confined to one
kind of love. And Love desires not only the good, but the everlasting
possession of the good. Why then is there all this flutter and
excitement about love? Because all men and women at a certain age are
desirous of bringing to the birth. And love is not of beauty only, but
of birth in beauty; this is the principle of immortality in a mortal
creature. When beauty approaches, then the conceiving power is benign
and diffuse; when foulness, she is averted and morose.
But why again does this extend not only to men but also to animals?
Because they too have an instinct of immortality. Even in the same
individual there is a perpetual succession as well of the parts of the
material body as of the thoughts and desires of the mind; nay, even
knowledge comes and goes. There is no sameness of existence, but the new
mortality is always taking the place of the old. This is the reason why
parents love their children--for the sake of immortality; and this is
why men love the immortality of fame. For the creative soul creates not
children, but conceptions of wisdom and virtue, such as poets and other
creators have invented. And the noblest creations of all are those of
legislators, in honour of whom temples have been raised. Who would not
sooner have these children of the mind than the ordinary human ones?
(Compare Bacon's Essays, 8:--'Certainly the best works and of greatest
merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men;
which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.')
I will now initiate you, she said, into the greater mysteries; for he
who would proceed in due course should love first one fair form, and
then many, and learn the connexion of them; and from beautiful bodies
he should proceed to beautiful minds, and the beauty of laws and
institutions, until he perceives that all beauty is of one kindred; and
from institutions he should go on to the sciences, until at last the
vision is revealed to him of a single science of universal beauty, and
then he will behold the everlasting nature which is the cause of all,
and will be near the end. In the contemplation of that supreme being of
love he will be purified of earthly leaven, and will behold beauty, not
with the bodily eye, but with the eye of the mind, and will bring forth
true creations of virtue and wisdom, and be the friend of God and heir
of immortality.
Such, Phaedrus, is the tale which I heard from the stranger of Mantinea,
and which you may call the encomium of love, or what you please.
The company applaud the speech of Socrates, and Aristophanes is about to
say something, when suddenly a band of revellers breaks into the court,
and the voice of Alcibiades is heard asking for Agathon. He is led
in drunk, and welcomed by Agathon, whom he has come to crown with
a garland. He is placed on a couch at his side, but suddenly, on
recognizing Socrates, he starts up, and a sort of conflict is carried
on between them, which Agathon is requested to appease. Alcibiades then
insists that they shall drink, and has a large wine-cooler filled,
which he first empties himself, and then fills again and passes on to
Socrates. He is informed of the nature of the entertainment; and is
ready to join, if only in the character of a drunken and disappointed
lover he may be allowed to sing the praises of Socrates:--
He begins by comparing Socrates first to the busts of Silenus, which
have images of the gods inside them; and, secondly, to Marsyas the
flute-player. For Socrates produces the same effect with the voice which
Marsyas did with the flute. He is the great speaker and enchanter
who ravishes the souls of men; the convincer of hearts too, as he has
convinced Alcibiades, and made him ashamed of his mean and miserable
life. Socrates at one time seemed about to fall in love with him; and he
thought that he would thereby gain a wonderful opportunity of receiving
lessons of wisdom. He narrates the failure of his design. He has
suffered agonies from him, and is at his wit's end. He then proceeds to
mention some other particulars of the life of Socrates; how they were at
Potidaea together, where Socrates showed his superior powers of enduring
cold and fatigue; how on one occasion he had stood for an entire day and
night absorbed in reflection amid the wonder of the spectators; how on
another occasion he had saved Alcibiades' life; how at the battle
of Delium, after the defeat, he might be seen stalking about like a
pelican, rolling his eyes as Aristophanes had described him in the
Clouds. He is the most wonderful of human beings, and absolutely unlike
anyone but a satyr. Like the satyr in his language too; for he uses the
commonest words as the outward mask of the divinest truths.
When Alcibiades has done speaking, a dispute begins between him
and Agathon and Socrates. Socrates piques Alcibiades by a pretended
affection for Agathon. Presently a band of revellers appears, who
introduce disorder into the feast; the sober part of the company,
Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others, withdraw; and Aristodemus, the
follower of Socrates, sleeps during the whole of a long winter's night.
When he wakes at cockcrow the revellers are nearly all asleep. Only
Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon hold out; they are drinking from a
large goblet, which they pass round, and Socrates is explaining to the
two others, who are half-asleep, that the genius of tragedy is the same
as that of comedy, and that the writer of tragedy ought to be a writer
of comedy also. And first Aristophanes drops, and then, as the day is
dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to rest, takes a bath and
goes to his daily avocations until the evening. Aristodemus follows.
...
If it be true that there are more things in the Symposium of Plato than
any commentator has dreamed of, it is also true that many things have
been imagined which are not really to be found there. Some writings
hardly admit of a more distinct interpretation than a musical
composition; and every reader may form his own accompaniment of thought
or feeling to the strain which he hears. The Symposium of Plato is a
work of this character, and can with difficulty be rendered in any words
but the writer's own. There are so many half-lights and cross-lights,
so much of the colour of mythology, and of the manner of sophistry
adhering--rhetoric and poetry, the playful and the serious, are so
subtly intermingled in it, and vestiges of old philosophy so curiously
blend with germs of future knowledge, that agreement among interpreters
is not to be expected. The expression 'poema magis putandum quam
comicorum poetarum,' which has been applied to all the writings of
Plato, is especially applicable to the Symposium.
The power of love is represented in the Symposium as running through all
nature and all being: at one end descending to animals and plants, and
attaining to the highest vision of truth at the other. In an age