Symposium
still disagreed, there could be no harmony,--clearly not. For harmony
is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an agreement of
disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you cannot harmonize
that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is compounded of elements
short and long, once differing and now in accord; which accordance, as
in the former instance, medicine, so in all these other cases, music
implants, making love and unison to grow up among them; and thus music,
too, is concerned with the principles of love in their application to
harmony and rhythm. Again, in the essential nature of harmony and rhythm
there is no difficulty in discerning love which has not yet become
double. But when you want to use them in actual life, either in the
composition of songs or in the correct performance of airs or metres
composed already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty
begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be
repeated of fair and heavenly love--the love of Urania the fair and
heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate, and those
who are as yet intemperate only that they may become temperate, and of
preserving their love; and again, of the vulgar Polyhymnia, who must
be used with circumspection that the pleasure be enjoyed, but may not
generate licentiousness; just as in my own art it is a great matter so
to regulate the desires of the epicure that he may gratify his tastes
without the attendant evil of disease. Whence I infer that in music, in
medicine, in all other things human as well as divine, both loves ought
to be noted as far as may be, for they are both present.
The course of the seasons is also full of both these principles; and
when, as I was saying, the elements of hot and cold, moist and dry,
attain the harmonious love of one another and blend in temperance and
harmony, they bring to men, animals, and plants health and plenty, and
do them no harm; whereas the wanton love, getting the upper hand and
affecting the seasons of the year, is very destructive and injurious,
being the source of pestilence, and bringing many other kinds of
diseases on animals and plants; for hoar-frost and hail and blight
spring from the excesses and disorders of these elements of love, which
to know in relation to the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the
seasons of the year is termed astronomy. Furthermore all sacrifices and
the whole province of divination, which is the art of communion between
gods and men--these, I say, are concerned only with the preservation
of the good and the cure of the evil love. For all manner of impiety is
likely to ensue if, instead of accepting and honouring and reverencing
the harmonious love in all his actions, a man honours the other love,
whether in his feelings towards gods or parents, towards the living or
the dead. Wherefore the business of divination is to see to these loves
and to heal them, and divination is the peacemaker of gods and men,
working by a knowledge of the religious or irreligious tendencies which
exist in human loves. Such is the great and mighty, or rather omnipotent
force of love in general. And the love, more especially, which is
concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with
temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest
power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and makes us
friends with the gods who are above us, and with one another. I dare say
that I too have omitted several things which might be said in praise
of Love, but this was not intentional, and you, Aristophanes, may now
supply the omission or take some other line of commendation; for I
perceive that you are rid of the hiccough.
Yes, said Aristophanes, who followed, the hiccough is gone; not,
however, until I applied the sneezing; and I wonder whether the harmony
of the body has a love of such noises and ticklings, for I no sooner
applied the sneezing than I was cured.
Eryximachus said: Beware, friend Aristophanes, although you are going
to speak, you are making fun of me; and I shall have to watch and see
whether I cannot have a laugh at your expense, when you might speak in
peace.
You are right, said Aristophanes, laughing. I will unsay my words; but
do you please not to watch me, as I fear that in the speech which I
am about to make, instead of others laughing with me, which is to the
manner born of our muse and would be all the better, I shall only be
laughed at by them.
Do you expect to shoot your bolt and escape, Aristophanes? Well, perhaps
if you are very careful and bear in mind that you will be called to
account, I may be induced to let you off.
Aristophanes professed to open another vein of discourse; he had a
mind to praise Love in another way, unlike that either of Pausanias or
Eryximachus. Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have
never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they had
understood him they would surely have built noble temples and altars,
and offered solemn sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and
most certainly ought to be done: since of all the gods he is the best
friend of men, the helper and the healer of the ills which are the great
impediment to the happiness of the race. I will try to describe his
power to you, and you shall teach the rest of the world what I am
teaching you. In the first place, let me treat of the nature of man and
what has happened to it; for the original human nature was not like
the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but
originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the
two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once
a real existence, but is now lost, and the word 'Androgynous' is only
preserved as a term of reproach. In the second place, the primeval man
was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands
and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a
round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members,
and the remainder to correspond. He could walk upright as men now do,
backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and
over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in
all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this
was when he wanted to run fast. Now the sexes were three, and such as I
have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three; and the
man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the
man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were
all round and moved round and round like their parents. Terrible was
their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great,
and they made an attack upon the gods; of them is told the tale of Otys
and Ephialtes who, as Homer says, dared to scale heaven, and would
have laid hands upon the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils.
Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they
had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and
worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods
could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained. At last, after a
good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said: 'Methinks I
have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners; men
shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will
be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the
advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright
on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will
split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.' He spoke and
cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickling, or
as you might divide an egg with a hair; and as he cut them one after
another, he bade Apollo give the face and the half of the neck a turn
in order that the man might contemplate the section of himself: he would
thus learn a lesson of humility. Apollo was also bidden to heal their
wounds and compose their forms. So he gave a turn to the face and pulled
the skin from the sides all over that which in our language is called
the belly, like the purses which draw in, and he made one mouth at
the centre, which he fastened in a knot (the same which is called the
navel); he also moulded the breast and took out most of the wrinkles,
much as a shoemaker might smooth leather upon a last; he left a few,
however, in the region of the belly and navel, as a memorial of the
primeval state. After the division the two parts of man, each desiring
his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one
another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they
were on the point of dying from hunger and self-neglect, because they
did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and
the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as
we call them,--being the sections of entire men or women,--and clung to
that. They were being destroyed, when Zeus in pity of them invented a
new plan: he turned the parts of generation round to the front, for this
had not been always their position, and they sowed the seed no longer as
hitherto like grasshoppers in the ground, but in one another; and after
the transposition the male generated in the female in order that by the
mutual embraces of man and woman they might breed, and the race might
continue; or if man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and
go their ways to the business of life: so ancient is the desire of one
another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, making
one of two, and healing the state of man. Each of us when separated,
having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man,
and he is always looking for his other half. Men who are a section
of that double nature which was once called Androgynous are lovers of
women; adulterers are generally of this breed, and also adulterous women
who lust after men: the women who are a section of the woman do not care
for men, but have female attachments; the female companions are of this
sort. But they who are a section of the male follow the male, and while
they are young, being slices of the original man, they hang about men
and embrace them, and they are themselves the best of boys and youths,
because they have the most manly nature. Some indeed assert that they
are shameless, but this is not true; for they do not act thus from any
want of shame, but because they are valiant and manly, and have a manly
countenance, and they embrace that which is like them. And these when
they grow up become our statesmen, and these only, which is a great
proof of the truth of what I am saving. When they reach manhood they
are lovers of youth, and are not naturally inclined to marry or beget
children,--if at all, they do so only in obedience to the law; but they
are satisfied if they may be allowed to live with one another unwedded;
and such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, always
embracing that which is akin to him. And when one of them meets with his
other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth
or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love
and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's
sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass
their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire
of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards
the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but
of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot