Obras Completas de Platón

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Symposium

by Plato

INTRODUCTION

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Of all the works of Plato the Symposium is the most perfect in form, and

may be truly thought to contain more than any commentator has ever dreamed

of; or, as Goethe said of one of his own writings, more than the author

himself knew. For in philosophy as in prophecy glimpses of the future may

often be conveyed in words which could hardly have been understood or

interpreted at the time when they were uttered (compare Symp.)--which were

wiser than the writer of them meant, and could not have been expressed by

him if he had been interrogated about them. Yet Plato was not a mystic,

nor in any degree affected by the Eastern influences which afterwards

overspread the Alexandrian world. He was not an enthusiast or a

sentimentalist, but one who aspired only to see reasoned truth, and whose

thoughts are clearly explained in his language. There is no foreign

element either of Egypt or of Asia to be found in his writings. And more

than any other Platonic work the Symposium is Greek both in style and

subject, having a beauty 'as of a statue,' while the companion Dialogue of

the Phaedrus is marked by a sort of Gothic irregularity. More too than in

any other of his Dialogues, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies.

The genius of Greek art seems to triumph over the traditions of

Pythagorean, Eleatic, or Megarian systems, and 'the old quarrel of poetry

and philosophy' has at least a superficial reconcilement. (Rep.)

An unknown person who had heard of the discourses in praise of love spoken

by Socrates and others at the banquet of Agathon is desirous of having an

authentic account of them, which he thinks that he can obtain from

Apollodorus, the same excitable, or rather 'mad' friend of Socrates, who is

afterwards introduced in the Phaedo. He had imagined that the discourses

were recent. There he is mistaken: but they are still fresh in the memory

of his informant, who had just been repeating them to Glaucon, and is quite

prepared to have another rehearsal of them in a walk from the Piraeus to

Athens. Although he had not been present himself, he had heard them from

the best authority. Aristodemus, who is described as having been in past

times a humble but inseparable attendant of Socrates, had reported them to

him (compare Xen. Mem.).

The narrative which he had heard was as follows:--

Aristodemus meeting Socrates in holiday attire, is invited by him to a

banquet at the house of Agathon, who had been sacrificing in thanksgiving

for his tragic victory on the day previous. But no sooner has he entered

the house than he finds that he is alone; Socrates has stayed behind in a

fit of abstraction, and does not appear until the banquet is half over. On

his appearing he and the host jest a little; the question is then asked by

Pausanias, one of the guests, 'What shall they do about drinking? as they

had been all well drunk on the day before, and drinking on two successive

days is such a bad thing.' This is confirmed by the authority of

Eryximachus the physician, who further proposes that instead of listening

to the flute-girl and her 'noise' they shall make speeches in honour of

love, one after another, going from left to right in the order in which

they are reclining at the table. All of them agree to this proposal, and

Phaedrus, who is the 'father' of the idea, which he has previously

communicated to Eryximachus, begins as follows:--

He descants first of all upon the antiquity of love, which is proved by the

authority of the poets; secondly upon the benefits which love gives to man.

The greatest of these is the sense of honour and dishonour. The lover is

ashamed to be seen by the beloved doing or suffering any cowardly or mean

act. And a state or army which was made up only of lovers and their loves

would be invincible. For love will convert the veriest coward into an

inspired hero.

And there have been true loves not only of men but of women also. Such was

the love of Alcestis, who dared to die for her husband, and in recompense

of her virtue was allowed to come again from the dead. But Orpheus, the

miserable harper, who went down to Hades alive, that he might bring back

his wife, was mocked with an apparition only, and the gods afterwards

contrived his death as the punishment of his cowardliness. The love of

Achilles, like that of Alcestis, was courageous and true; for he was

willing to avenge his lover Patroclus, although he knew that his own death

would immediately follow: and the gods, who honour the love of the beloved

above that of the lover, rewarded him, and sent him to the islands of the

blest.

Pausanias, who was sitting next, then takes up the tale:--He says that

Phaedrus should have distinguished the heavenly love from the earthly,

before he praised either. For there are two loves, as there are two

Aphrodites--one the daughter of Uranus, who has no mother and is the elder

and wiser goddess, and the other, the daughter of Zeus and Dione, who is

popular and common. The first of the two loves has a noble purpose, and

delights only in the intelligent nature of man, and is faithful to the end,

and has no shadow of wantonness or lust. The second is the coarser kind of

love, which is a love of the body rather than of the soul, and is of women

and boys as well as of men. Now the actions of lovers vary, like every

other sort of action, according to the manner of their performance. And in

different countries there is a difference of opinion about male loves.

Some, like the Boeotians, approve of them; others, like the Ionians, and

most of the barbarians, disapprove of them; partly because they are aware

of the political dangers which ensue from them, as may be seen in the

instance of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. At Athens and Sparta there is an

apparent contradiction about them. For at times they are encouraged, and

then the lover is allowed to play all sorts of fantastic tricks; he may

swear and forswear himself (and 'at lovers' perjuries they say Jove

laughs'); he may be a servant, and lie on a mat at the door of his love,

without any loss of character; but there are also times when elders look

grave and guard their young relations, and personal remarks are made. The

truth is that some of these loves are disgraceful and others honourable.

The vulgar love of the body which takes wing and flies away when the bloom

of youth is over, is disgraceful, and so is the interested love of power or

wealth; but the love of the noble mind is lasting. The lover should be

tested, and the beloved should not be too ready to yield. The rule in our

country is that the beloved may do the same service to the lover in the way

of virtue which the lover may do to him.

A voluntary service to be rendered for the sake of virtue and wisdom is

permitted among us; and when these two customs--one the love of youth, the

other the practice of virtue and philosophy--meet in one, then the lovers

may lawfully unite. Nor is there any disgrace to a disinterested lover in

being deceived: but the interested lover is doubly disgraced, for if he

loses his love he loses his character; whereas the noble love of the other

remains the same, although the object of his love is unworthy: for nothing

can be nobler than love for the sake of virtue. This is that love of the

heavenly goddess which is of great price to individuals and cities, making

them work together for their improvement.

The turn of Aristophanes comes next; but he has the hiccough, and therefore

proposes that Eryximachus the physician shall cure him or speak in his

turn. Eryximachus is ready to do both, and after prescribing for the

hiccough, speaks as follows:--

He agrees with Pausanias in maintaining that there are two kinds of love;

but his art has led him to the further conclusion that the empire of this

double love extends over all things, and is to be found in animals and

plants as well as in man. In the human body also there are two loves; and

the art of medicine shows which is the good and which is the bad love, and

persuades the body to accept the good and reject the bad, and reconciles

conflicting elements and makes them friends. Every art, gymnastic and

husbandry as well as medicine, is the reconciliation of opposites; and this

is what Heracleitus meant, when he spoke of a harmony of opposites: but in

strictness he should rather have spoken of a harmony which succeeds

opposites, for an agreement of disagreements there cannot be. Music too is

concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and

rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple, and we are not troubled with the

twofold love; but when they are applied in education with their

accompaniments of song and metre, then the discord begins. Then the old

tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and the coarse Polyhymnia, who must

be indulged sparingly, just as in my own art of medicine care must be taken

that the taste of the epicure be gratified without inflicting upon him the

attendant penalty of disease.

There is a similar harmony or disagreement in the course of the seasons and

in the relations of moist and dry, hot and cold, hoar frost and blight; and

diseases of all sorts spring from the excesses or disorders of the element

of love. The knowledge of these elements of love and discord in the

heavenly bodies is termed astronomy, in the relations of men towards gods

and parents is called divination. For divination is the peacemaker of gods

and men, and works by a knowledge of the tendencies of merely human loves

to piety and impiety. Such is the power of love; and that love which is

just and temperate has the greatest power, and is the source of all our

happiness and friendship with the gods and with one another. I dare say

that I have omitted to mention many things which you, Aristophanes, may

supply, as I perceive that you are cured of the hiccough.

Aristophanes is the next speaker:--

He professes to open a new vein of discourse, in which he begins by

treating of the origin of human nature. The sexes were originally three,

men, women, and the union of the two; and they were made round--having four

hands, four feet, two faces on a round neck, and the rest to correspond.

Terrible was their strength and swiftness; and they were essaying to scale

heaven and attack the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils; the

gods were divided between the desire of quelling the pride of man and the

fear of losing the sacrifices. At last Zeus hit upon an expedient. Let us

cut them in two, he said; then they will only have half their strength, and

we shall have twice as many sacrifices. He spake, and split them as you

might split an egg with an hair; and when this was done, he told Apollo to

give their faces a twist and re-arrange their persons, taking out the

wrinkles and tying the skin in a knot about the navel. The two halves went

about looking for one another, and were ready to die of hunger in one

another's arms. Then Zeus invented an adjustment of the sexes, which

enabled them to marry and go their way to the business of life. Now the

characters of men differ accordingly as they are derived from the original

man or the original woman, or the original man-woman. Those who come from

the man-woman are lascivious and adulterous; those who come from the woman

form female attachments; those who are a section of the male follow the

male and embrace him, and in him all their desires centre. The pair are

inseparable and live together in pure and manly affection; yet they cannot

tell what they want of one another. But if Hephaestus were to come to them

with his instruments and propose that they should be melted into one and

remain one here and hereafter, they would acknowledge that this was the

very expression of 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 when man

was seeking for an expression of the world around him, the conception of

love greatly affected him. One of the first distinctions of language and

of mythology was that of gender; and at a later period the ancient

physicist, anticipating modern science, saw, or thought that he saw, a sex

in plants; there were elective affinities among the elements, marriages of

earth and heaven. (Aesch. Frag. Dan.) Love became a mythic personage whom

philosophy, borrowing from poetry, converted into an efficient cause of

creation. The traces of the existence of love, as of number and figure,

were everywhere discerned; and in the Pythagorean list of opposites male

and female were ranged side by side with odd and even, finite and infinite.

But Plato seems also to be aware that there is a mystery of love in man as

well as in nature, extending beyond the mere immediate relation of the

sexes. He is conscious that the highest and noblest things in the world

are not easily severed from the sensual desires, or may even be regarded as

a spiritualized form of them. We may observe that Socrates himself is not

represented as originally unimpassioned, but as one who has overcome his

passions; the secret of his power over others partly lies in his passionate

but self-controlled nature. In the Phaedrus and Symposium love is not

merely the feeling usually so called, but the mystical contemplation of the

beautiful and the good. The same passion which may wallow in the mire is

capable of rising to the loftiest heights--of penetrating the inmost secret

of philosophy. The highest love is the love not of a person, but of the

highest and purest abstraction. This abstraction is the far-off heaven on

which the eye of the mind is fixed in fond amazement. The unity of truth,

the consistency of the warring elements of the world, the enthusiasm for

knowledge when first beaming upon mankind, the relativity of ideas to the

human mind, and of the human mind to ideas, the faith in the invisible, the

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 skims the highest points of each of them. But they are not to be

regarded as the stages of an idea, rising above one another to a climax.

They are fanciful, partly facetious performances, 'yet also having a

certain measure of seriousness,' which the successive speakers dedicate to

the god. All of them are rhetorical and poetical rather than dialectical,

but 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 which has troubled the

moderns as well as the ancients in music, and may be extended to the other

applied sciences. That confusion begins in the concrete, was the natural

feeling 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 the truth of his remark. 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 home sickness.' 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 Arist.

Nic. Ethics). So naturally does Plato mingle jest and earnest, truth and

opinion in the same work.

The characters--of Phaedrus, who has been the cause of more philosophical

discussions than any other man, with the exception of Simmias the Theban

(Phaedrus); of Aristophanes, who disguises under comic imagery a serious

purpose; of Agathon, who in later life is satirized by Aristophanes in the

Thesmophoriazusae, for his effeminate manners and the feeble rhythms of his

verse; of Alcibiades, who is the same strange contrast of great powers and

great vices, which meets us in history--are drawn to the life; and we may

suppose the less-known characters of Pausanias and Eryximachus to be also

true to the traditional recollection of them (compare Phaedr., Protag.; and

compare Sympos. with Phaedr.). We may also remark that Aristodemus is

called 'the little' in Xenophon's Memorabilia (compare Symp.).

The speeches have been said to follow each other in pairs: Phaedrus and

Pausanias being the ethical, Eryximachus and Aristophanes the physical

speakers, while in Agathon and Socrates poetry and philosophy blend

together. The speech of Phaedrus is also described as the mythological,

that of Pausanias as the political, that of Eryximachus as the scientific,

that of Aristophanes as the artistic (!), that of Socrates as the

philosophical. But these and similar distinctions are not found in Plato;

--they are the points of view of his critics, and seem to impede rather

than to assist us in understanding him.

When the turn of Socrates comes round he cannot be allowed to disturb the

arrangement made at first. With the leave of Phaedrus he asks a few

questions, and then he throws his argument into the form of a speech

(compare Gorg., Protag.). But his speech is really the narrative of a

dialogue between himself and Diotima. And as at a banquet good manners

would not allow him to win a victory either over his host or any of the

guests, the superiority which he gains over Agathon is ingeniously

represented as having been already gained over himself by her. The

artifice has the further advantage of maintaining his accustomed profession

of ignorance (compare Menex.). Even his knowledge of the mysteries of

love, to which he lays claim here and elsewhere (Lys.), is given by

Diotima.

The speeches are attested to us by the very best authority. The madman

Apollodorus, who for three years past has made a daily study of the actions

of Socrates--to whom the world is summed up in the words 'Great is

Socrates'--he has heard them from another 'madman,' Aristodemus, who was

the 'shadow' of Socrates in days of old, like him going about barefooted,

and who had been present at the time. 'Would you desire better witness?'

The extraordinary narrative of Alcibiades is ingeniously represented as

admitted by Socrates, whose silence when he is invited to contradict gives

consent to the narrator. We may observe, by the way, (1) how the very

appearance of Aristodemus by himself is a sufficient indication to Agathon

that Socrates has been left behind; also, (2) how the courtesy of Agathon

anticipates the excuse which Socrates was to have made on Aristodemus'

behalf for coming uninvited; (3) how the story of the fit or trance of

Socrates is confirmed by the mention which Alcibiades makes of a similar

fit of abstraction occurring when he was serving with the army at Potidaea;

like (4) the drinking powers of Socrates and his love of the fair, which

receive a similar attestation in the concluding scene; or the attachment of

Aristodemus, who is not forgotten when Socrates takes his departure. (5)

We may notice the manner in which Socrates himself regards the first five

speeches, not as true, but as fanciful and exaggerated encomiums of the god

Love; (6) the satirical character of them, shown especially in the appeals

to mythology, in the reasons which are given by Zeus for reconstructing the

frame of man, or by the Boeotians and Eleans for encouraging male loves;

(7) the ruling passion of Socrates for dialectics, who will argue with

Agathon instead of making a speech, and will only speak at all upon the

condition that he is allowed to speak the truth. We may note also the

touch of Socratic irony, (8) which admits of a wide application and reveals

a deep insight into the world:--that in speaking of holy things and persons

there is a general understanding that you should praise them, not that you

should speak the truth about them--this is the sort of praise which

Socrates is unable to give. Lastly, (9) we may remark that the banquet is

a real banquet after all, at which love is the theme of discourse, and huge

quantities of wine are drunk.

The discourse of Phaedrus is half-mythical, half-ethical; and he himself,

true to the character which is given him in the Dialogue bearing his name,

is half-sophist, half-enthusiast. He is the critic of poetry also, who

compares Homer and Aeschylus in the insipid and irrational manner of the

schools of the day, characteristically reasoning about the probability of

matters which do not admit of reasoning. He starts from a noble text:

'That without the sense of honour and dishonour neither states nor

individuals ever do any good or great work.' But he soon passes on to more

common-place topics. The antiquity of love, the blessing of having a

lover, the incentive which love offers to daring deeds, the examples of

Alcestis and Achilles, are the chief themes of his discourse. The love of

women is regarded by him as almost on an equality with that of men; and he

makes the singular remark that the gods favour the return of love which is

made by the beloved more than the original sentiment, because the lover is

of a nobler and diviner nature.

There is something of a sophistical ring in the speech of Phaedrus, which

recalls the first speech in imitation of Lysias, occurring in the Dialogue

called the Phaedrus. This is still more marked in the speech of Pausanias

which follows; and which is at once hyperlogical in form and also extremely

confused and pedantic. Plato is attacking the logical feebleness of the

sophists and rhetoricians, through their pupils, not forgetting by the way

to satirize the monotonous and unmeaning rhythms which Prodicus and others

were introducing into Attic prose (compare Protag.). Of course, he is

'playing both sides of the game,' as in the Gorgias and Phaedrus; but it is

not necessary in order to understand him that we should discuss the

fairness of his mode of proceeding. The love of Pausanias for Agathon has

already been touched upon in the Protagoras, and is alluded to by

Aristophanes. Hence he is naturally the upholder of male loves, which,

like all the other affections or actions of men, he regards as varying

according to the manner of their performance. Like the sophists and like

Plato himself, though in a different sense, he begins his discussion by an

appeal to mythology, and distinguishes between the elder and younger love.

The value which he attributes to such loves as motives to virtue and

philosophy is at variance with modern and Christian notions, but is in

accordance with Hellenic sentiment. The opinion of Christendom has not

altogether condemned passionate friendships between persons of the same

sex, but has certainly not encouraged them, because though innocent in

themselves in a few temperaments they are liable to degenerate into fearful

evil. Pausanias is very earnest in the defence of such loves; and he

speaks of them as generally approved among Hellenes and disapproved by

barbarians. His speech is 'more words than matter,' and might have been

composed by a pupil of Lysias or of Prodicus, although there is no hint

given that Plato is specially referring to them. As Eryximachus says, 'he

makes a fair beginning, but a lame ending.'

Plato transposes the two next speeches, as in the Republic he would

transpose the virtues and the mathematical sciences. This is done partly

to avoid monotony, partly for the sake of making Aristophanes 'the cause of

wit in others,' and also in order to bring the comic and tragic poet into

juxtaposition, as if by accident. A suitable 'expectation' of Aristophanes

is raised by the ludicrous circumstance of his having the hiccough, which

is appropriately cured by his substitute, the physician Eryximachus. To

Eryximachus Love is the good physician; he sees everything as an

intelligent physicist, and, like many professors of his art in modern

times, attempts to reduce the moral to the physical; or recognises one law

of love which pervades them both. There are loves and strifes of the body

as well as of the mind. Like Hippocrates the Asclepiad, he is a disciple

of Heracleitus, whose conception of the harmony of opposites he explains in

a new way as the harmony after discord; to his common sense, as to that of

many moderns as well as ancients, the identity of contradictories is an

absurdity. His notion of love may be summed up as the harmony of man with

himself in soul as well as body, and of all things in heaven and earth with

one another.

Aristophanes is ready to laugh and make laugh before he opens his mouth,

just as Socrates, true to his character, is ready to argue before he begins

to speak. He expresses the very genius of the old comedy, its coarse and

forcible imagery, and the licence of its language in speaking about the

gods. He has no sophistical notions about love, which is brought back by

him to its common-sense meaning of love between intelligent beings. His

account of the origin of the sexes has the greatest (comic) probability and

verisimilitude. Nothing in Aristophanes is more truly Aristophanic than

the description of the human monster whirling round on four arms and four

legs, eight in all, with incredible rapidity. Yet there is a mixture of

earnestness in this jest; three serious principles seem to be insinuated:--

first, that man cannot exist in isolation; he must be reunited if he is to

be perfected: secondly, that love is the mediator and reconciler of poor,

divided human nature: thirdly, that the loves of this world are an

indistinct anticipation of an ideal union which is not yet realized.

The speech of Agathon is conceived in a higher strain, and receives the

real, if half-ironical, approval of Socrates. It is the speech of the

tragic poet and a sort of poem, like tragedy, moving among the gods of

Olympus, and not among the elder or Orphic deities. In the idea of the

antiquity of love he cannot agree; love is not of the olden time, but

present and youthful ever. The speech may be compared with that speech of

Socrates in the Phaedrus in which he describes himself as talking

dithyrambs. It is at once a preparation for Socrates and a foil to him.

The rhetoric of Agathon elevates the soul to 'sunlit heights,' but at the

same time contrasts with the natural and necessary eloquence of Socrates.

Agathon contributes the distinction between love and the works of love, and

also hints incidentally that love is always of beauty, which Socrates

afterwards raises into a principle. While the consciousness of discord is

stronger in the comic poet Aristophanes, Agathon, the tragic poet, has a

deeper sense of harmony and reconciliation, and speaks of Love as the

creator and artist.

All the earlier speeches embody common opinions coloured with a tinge of

philosophy. They furnish the material out of which Socrates proceeds to

form his discourse, starting, as in other places, from mythology and the

opinions of men. From Phaedrus he takes the thought that love is stronger

than death; from Pausanias, that the true love is akin to intellect and

political activity; from Eryximachus, that love is a universal phenomenon

and the great power of nature; from Aristophanes, that love is the child of

want, and is not merely the love of the congenial or of the whole, but (as

he adds) of the good; from Agathon, that love is of beauty, not however of

beauty only, but of birth in beauty. As it would be out of character for

Socrates to make a lengthened harangue, the speech takes the form of a

dialogue between Socrates and a mysterious woman of foreign extraction.

She elicits the final truth from one who knows nothing, and who, speaking

by the lips of another, and himself a despiser of rhetoric, is proved also

to be the most consummate of rhetoricians (compare Menexenus).

The last of the six discourses begins with a short argument which

overthrows not only Agathon but all the preceding speakers by the help of a

distinction which has escaped them. Extravagant praises have been ascribed

to Love as the author of every good; no sort of encomium was too high for

him, whether deserved and true or not. But Socrates has no talent for

speaking anything but the truth, and if he is to speak the truth of Love he

must honestly confess that he is not a good at all: for love is of the

good, and no man can desire that which he has. This piece of dialectics is

ascribed to Diotima, who has already urged upon Socrates the argument which

he urges against Agathon. That the distinction is a fallacy is obvious; it

is almost acknowledged to be so by Socrates himself. For he who has beauty

or good may desire more of them; and he who has beauty or good in himself

may desire beauty and good in others. The fallacy seems to arise out of 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 proprieties 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 which is satisfied in the vulgar by the procreation of children,

may become the highest aspiration of intellectual desire. As the Christian

might speak of hungering and thirsting after righteousness; or of divine

loves under the figure of human (compare Eph. 'This is a great mystery, but

I speak concerning Christ and the church'); as the mediaeval saint might

speak of the 'fruitio Dei;' as Dante saw all things contained in his love

of Beatrice, so Plato would have us absorb all other loves and desires in

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 of the affections was not wholly subdued; there were

longings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

which no art could satisfy. To most men reason and passion appear to be

antagonistic both in idea and fact. The union of the greatest

comprehension of knowledge and the burning intensity of love is a

contradiction in nature, which may have existed in a far-off primeval age

in the mind of some Hebrew prophet or other Eastern sage, but has now

become an imagination only. Yet this 'passion of the reason' is the theme

of the Symposium of Plato. And as there is no impossibility in supposing

that 'one king, or son of a king, may be a philosopher,' so also there is a

probability that there may be some few--perhaps one or two in a whole

generation--in whom the light of truth may not lack the warmth of desire.

And if there be such natures, no one will be disposed to deny that 'from

them flow most of the benefits of individuals and states;' and even from

imperfect combinations of the two elements in teachers or statesmen great

good may often arise.

Yet there is a higher region in which love is not only felt, but satisfied,

in the perfect beauty of eternal knowledge, beginning with the beauty of

earthly things, and at last reaching a beauty in which all existence is

seen to be harmonious and one. The limited affection is enlarged, and

enabled to behold the ideal of all things. And here the highest summit

which is reached in the Symposium is seen also to be the highest summit

which is attained in the Republic, but approached from another side; and

there is 'a way upwards and downwards,' which is the same and not the same

in both. The ideal beauty of the one is the ideal good of the other;

regarded not with the eye of knowledge, but of faith and desire; and they

are respectively the source of beauty and the source of good in all other

things. And by the steps of a 'ladder reaching to heaven' we pass from

images of visible beauty (Greek), and from the hypotheses of the

Mathematical sciences, which are not yet based upon the idea of good,

through the concrete to the abstract, and, by different paths arriving,

behold the vision of the eternal (compare Symp. (Greek) Republic (Greek)

also Phaedrus). Under one aspect 'the idea is love'; under another,

'truth.' In both the lover of wisdom is the 'spectator of all time and of

all existence.' This is a 'mystery' in which Plato also obscurely

intimates the union of the spiritual and fleshly, the interpenetration of

the moral and intellectual faculties.

The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed;

the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited. The description of

Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates; one is the

complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the

force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme

idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl,

staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have

been ashamed to make known if he had been sober. The state of his

affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they

appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man

in the speech of Pausanias. He does not suppose his feelings to be

peculiar to himself: there are several other persons in the company who

have been equally in love with Socrates, and like himself have been

deceived by him. The singular part of this confession is the combination

of the most degrading passion with the desire of virtue and improvement.