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. Such an union is not wholly untrue to
human nature, which is capable of combining good and evil in a degree
beyond what we can easily conceive. In imaginative persons, especially,
the God and beast in man seem to part asunder more than is natural in
a well-regulated mind. The Platonic Socrates (for of the real Socrates
this may be doubted: compare his public rebuke of Critias for his
shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorabilia) does not regard
the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not to be spoken of; but it
has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp.), and is a subject for irony, no
less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato's Symp.). It is also used
as a figure of speech which no one interpreted literally (compare Xen.
Symp.). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such as would be felt in
modern times, at bringing his great master and hero into connexion with
nameless crimes. He is contented with representing him as a saint, who
has won 'the Olympian victory' over the temptations of human nature. The
fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was recognized
by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus), was not perceived by Plato
himself. We are still more surprised to find that the philosopher is
incited to take the first step in his upward progress (Symp.) by the
beauty of young men and boys, which was alone capable of inspiring the
modern feeling of romance in the Greek mind. The passion of love took
the spurious form of an enthusiasm for the ideal of beauty--a worship
as of some godlike image of an Apollo or Antinous. But the love of youth
when not depraved was a love of virtue and modesty as well as of beauty,
the one being the expression of the other; and in certain Greek states,
especially at Sparta and Thebes, the honourable attachment of a youth to
an elder man was a part of his education. The 'army of lovers and their
beloved who would be invincible if they could be united by such a tie'
(Symp.), is not a mere fiction of Plato's, but seems actually to have
existed at Thebes in the days of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, if we
may believe writers cited anonymously by Plutarch, Pelop. Vit. It is
observable that Plato never in the least degree excuses the depraved
love of the body (compare Charm.; Rep.; Laws; Symp.; and once more
Xenophon, Mem.), nor is there any Greek writer of mark who condones or
approves such connexions. But owing partly to the puzzling nature of the
subject these friendships are spoken of by Plato in a manner different
from that customary among ourselves. To most of them we should hesitate
to ascribe, any more than to the attachment of Achilles and Patroclus in
Homer, an immoral or licentious character. There were many, doubtless,
to whom the love of the fair mind was the noblest form of friendship
(Rep.), and who deemed the friendship of man with man to be higher
than the love of woman, because altogether separated from the bodily
appetites. The existence of such attachments may be reasonably
attributed to the inferiority and seclusion of woman, and the want of
a real family or social life and parental influence in Hellenic cities;
and they were encouraged by the practice of gymnastic exercises, by the
meetings of political clubs, and by the tie of military companionship.
They were also an educational institution: a young person was specially
entrusted by his parents to some elder friend who was expected by them
to train their son in manly exercises and in virtue. It is not likely
that a Greek parent committed him to a lover, any more than we should
to a schoolmaster, in the expectation that he would be corrupted by him,
but rather in the hope that his morals would be better cared for than
was possible in a great household of slaves.
It is difficult to adduce the authority of Plato either for or against
such practices or customs, because it is not always easy to determine
whether he is speaking of 'the heavenly and philosophical love, or
of the coarse Polyhymnia:' and he often refers to this (e.g. in the
Symposium) half in jest, yet 'with a certain degree of seriousness.'
We observe that they entered into one part of Greek literature, but not
into another, and that the larger part is free from such associations.
Indecency was an element of the ludicrous in the old Greek Comedy, as
it has been in other ages and countries. But effeminate love was always
condemned as well as ridiculed by the Comic poets; and in the New Comedy
the allusions to such topics have disappeared. They seem to have been no
longer tolerated by the greater refinement of the age. False sentiment
is found in the Lyric and Elegiac poets; and in mythology 'the greatest
of the Gods' (Rep.) is not exempt from evil imputations. But the morals
of a nation are not to be judged of wholly by its literature. Hellas
was not necessarily more corrupted in the days of the Persian and
Peloponnesian wars, or of Plato and the Orators, than England in the
time of Fielding and Smollett, or France in the nineteenth century. No
one supposes certain French novels to be a representation of ordinary
French life. And the greater part of Greek literature, beginning
with Homer and including the tragedians, philosophers, and, with the
exception of the Comic poets (whose business was to raise a laugh
by whatever means), all the greater writers of Hellas who have been
preserved to us, are free from the taint of indecency.
Some general considerations occur to our mind when we begin to reflect
on this subject. (1) That good and evil are linked together in human
nature, and have often existed side by side in the world and in man to
an extent hardly credible. We cannot distinguish them, and are therefore
unable to part them; as in the parable 'they grow together unto the
harvest:' it is only a rule of external decency by which society can
divide them. Nor should we be right in inferring from the prevalence of
any one vice or corruption that a state or individual was demoralized
in their whole character. Not only has the corruption of the best been
sometimes thought to be the worst, but it may be remarked that this very
excess of evil has been the stimulus to good (compare Plato, Laws, where
he says that in the most corrupt cities individuals are to be found
beyond all praise). (2) It may be observed that evils which admit of
degrees can seldom be rightly estimated, because under the same name
actions of the most different degrees of culpability may be included. No
charge is more easily set going than the imputation of secret wickedness
(which cannot be either proved or disproved and often cannot be defined)
when directed against a person of whom the world, or a section of it, is
predisposed to think evil. And it is quite possible that the malignity
of Greek scandal, aroused by some personal jealousy or party enmity, may
have converted the innocent friendship of a great man for a noble youth
into a connexion of another kind. Such accusations were brought against
several of the leading men of Hellas, e.g. Cimon, Alcibiades, Critias,
Demosthenes, Epaminondas: several of the Roman emperors were assailed
by similar weapons which have been used even in our own day against
statesmen of the highest character. (3) While we know that in this
matter there is a great gulf fixed between Greek and Christian Ethics,
yet, if we would do justice to the Greeks, we must also acknowledge that
there was a greater outspokenness among them than among ourselves about
the things which nature hides, and that the more frequent mention of
such topics is not to be taken as the measure of the prevalence of
offences, or as a proof of the general corruption of society. It is
likely that every religion in the world has used words or practised
rites in one age, which have become distasteful or repugnant to another.
We cannot, though for different reasons, trust the representations
either of Comedy or Satire; and still less of Christian Apologists.
(4) We observe that at Thebes and Lacedemon the attachment of an
elder friend to a beloved youth was often deemed to be a part of his
education; and was encouraged by his parents--it was only shameful if
it degenerated into licentiousness. Such we may believe to have been the
tie which united Asophychus and Cephisodorus with the great Epaminondas
in whose companionship they fell (Plutarch, Amat.; Athenaeus on the
authority of Theopompus). (5) A small matter: there appears to be a
difference of custom among the Greeks and among ourselves, as between
ourselves and continental nations at the present time, in modes of
salutation. We must not suspect evil in the hearty kiss or embrace of
a male friend 'returning from the army at Potidaea' any more than in
a similar salutation when practised by members of the same family. But
those who make these admissions, and who regard, not without pity, the
victims of such illusions in our own day, whose life has been blasted
by them, may be none the less resolved that the natural and healthy
instincts of mankind shall alone be tolerated (Greek); and that the
lesson of manliness which we have inherited from our fathers shall not
degenerate into sentimentalism or effeminacy. The possibility of an
honourable connexion of this kind seems to have died out with Greek
civilization. Among the Romans, and also among barbarians, such as the
Celts and Persians, there is no trace of such attachments existing in
any noble or virtuous form.
(Compare Hoeck's Creta and the admirable and exhaustive article of Meier
in Ersch and Grueber's Cyclopedia on this subject; Plutarch, Amatores;
Athenaeus; Lysias contra Simonem; Aesch. c. Timarchum.)
The character of Alcibiades in the Symposium is hardly less remarkable
than that of Socrates, and agrees with the picture given of him in the
first of the two Dialogues which are called by his name, and also with
the slight sketch of him in the Protagoras. He is the impersonation of
lawlessness--'the lion's whelp, who ought not to be reared in the
city,' yet not without a certain generosity which gained the hearts of
men,--strangely fascinated by Socrates, and possessed of a genius which
might have been either the destruction or salvation of Athens. The
dramatic interest of the character is heightened by the recollection of
his after history. He seems to have been present to the mind of Plato
in the description of the democratic man of the Republic (compare also
Alcibiades 1).
There is no criterion of the date of the Symposium, except that which
is furnished by the allusion to the division of Arcadia after the
destruction of Mantinea. This took place in the year B.C. 384, which is
the forty-fourth year of Plato's life. The Symposium cannot therefore be
regarded as a youthful work. As Mantinea was restored in the year 369,
the composition of the Dialogue will probably fall between 384 and
369. Whether the recollection of the event is more likely to have been
renewed at the destruction or restoration of the city, rather than at
some intermediate period, is a consideration not worth raising.
The Symposium is connected with the Phaedrus both in style and subject;
they are the only Dialogues of Plato in which the theme of love is
discussed at length. In both of them philosophy is regarded as a sort of
enthusiasm or madness; Socrates is himself 'a prophet new inspired' with
Bacchanalian revelry, which, like his philosophy, he characteristically
pretends to have derived not from himself but from others. The Phaedo
also presents some points of comparison with the Symposium. For there,
too, philosophy might be described as 'dying for love;' and there are
not wanting many touches of humour and fancy, which remind us of the
Symposium. But while the Phaedo and Phaedrus look backwards and forwards
to past and future states of existence, in the Symposium there is no
break between this world and another; and we rise from one to the other
by a regular series of steps or stages, proceeding from the particulars
of sense to the universal of reason, and from one universal to many,
which are finally reunited in a single science (compare Rep.). At first
immortality means only the succession of existences; even knowledge
comes and goes. Then follows, in the language of the mysteries, a higher
and a higher degree of initiation; at last we arrive at the perfect
vision of beauty, not relative or changing, but eternal and absolute;
not bounded by this world, or in or out of this world, but an aspect of
the divine, extending over all things, and having no limit of space or
time: this is the highest knowledge of which the human mind is capable.
Plato does not go on to ask whether the individual is absorbed in the
sea of light and beauty or retains his personality. Enough for him to
have attained the true beauty or good, without enquiring precisely into
the relation in which human beings stood to it. That the soul has such
a reach of thought, and is capable of partaking of the eternal nature,
seems to imply that she too is eternal (compare Phaedrus). But Plato
does not distinguish the eternal in man from the eternal in the world or
in God. He is willing to rest in the contemplation of the idea, which
to him is the cause of all things (Rep.), and has no strength to go
further.
The Symposium of Xenophon, in which Socrates describes himself as
a pander, and also discourses of the difference between sensual
and sentimental love, likewise offers several interesting points
of comparison. But the suspicion which hangs over other writings
of Xenophon, and the numerous minute references to the Phaedrus and
Symposium, as well as to some of the other writings of Plato, throw
a doubt on the genuineness of the work. The Symposium of Xenophon, if
written by him at all, would certainly show that he wrote against Plato,
and was acquainted with his works. Of this hostility there is no trace
in the Memorabilia. Such a rivalry is more characteristic of an imitator
than of an original writer. The (so-called) Symposium of Xenophon
may therefore have no more title to be regarded as genuine than the
confessedly spurious Apology.
There are no means of determining the relative order in time of the
Phaedrus, Symposium, Phaedo. The order which has been adopted in
this translation rests on no other principle than the desire to bring
together in a series the memorials of the life of Socrates.