it being persuaded that here every thing is goodly and highly to be
prized, unless it happens upon some divine and chaste love to be its
physician and preserver. This love, entering through the body, becomes
a guide to lead the soul from the world below to truth and the fields
of truth, where full, pure, deceitless beauty dwells; and leading
forth and guiding upward those that now after a long time are eager to
embrace and live with such beauty, it stands by them, like a friendly
mystagogue at the sacred ceremonies of initiation. But no sooner is the
soul sent from thence again, but love is no longer able to make her
approaches of herself, but by the body. And therefore as geometricians,
when children are not able of themselves to apprehend the intelligible
ideas of incorporeal and impassible substance, form and set before
their eyes the tangible and visible imitations of spheres, cubes, and
dodecahedrons; in like manner celestial love, having framed lovely
mirrors to represent lovely objects,—things mortal and passible to
represent things divine, and sensible objects to represent those
perceptible only to the eye of reason,—shows them to us glittering
in the forms, colors, and shape of youth in its prime, and first
insensibly moves the memory inflamed by the sight of these objects.
Whence it comes to pass that some, through the stupidity of their
friends and acquaintance, endeavoring by force and against reason to
extinguish that flame, have enjoyed nothing of true benefit thereby,
but only either disquieted themselves with smoke and trouble, or else
rushing headlong into obscure and irregular pleasures, obstinately
cast themselves away. But as many as by sober and modest ratiocination
have sincerely extinguished the raging heat of the fire, and left
behind only a warm and glowing heat in the soul,—which causes no
violent earthquake, as it was once called, rousing the seed and
causing a gliding of atoms compressed by smoothness and titillation,
but a wonderful and engendering diffusion, as in a blossoming
and well-nourished plant, which opens the pores of obedience and
affection,—these, I say, in a short time passing by the bodies of
those whom they love, penetrate more inwardly and fall to admire
their manners and dispositions; and calling off their eyes from the
body, they converse together, and contemplate one another in their
discourses and in their actions, provided there be but the least scrip
or appearance of beauty in the understanding. If not, they let them go,
and turn their affections upon others, like bees that will not fasten
upon many plants and flowers, because they cannot gather honey from
them. But where they find any footstep, any emanation, any resemblance
of a divinity, ravished with delight and admiration as they recall it
to memory, they attract it to themselves, and are revived by striving
to attain to what is truly amiable, happy, and beloved by all mankind.
20. True it is, that the poets, according to their sportive humor,
seem to write many things in merriment concerning this Deity, and to
make him the subject of their lascivious songs in the height of their
revelling jollity, making but little serious mention of him; whether
out of judgment and reason, or being assured of the truth by divine
inspiration, is the question. Among the rest, there is one thing which
they say very oddly concerning the birth and generation of this God:
Young Zephyr, doting on his golden hair,
At last the silver-slippered Iris won;
And thus embraced, at length she bore a son,
Of all the Gods the shrewdest and most fair:[107]
unless the grammarians have likewise persuaded you, by saying that
this fable was invented to set forth the variety and gay diversity of
passions that attend on love.
To whom Daphnaeus: To what other end or purpose could it be? Hear me
then, said my father; for ’tis no more than what the celestial meteor
constrains us to say. The affection of the sight in the case of the
rainbow (or Iris) is caused by reflection. For when the sight lights
upon a cloud somewhat of a dewy substance, but smooth, and moderately
thick withal, and we behold the repercussion of the sunbeams upon
it, together with the light and splendor about the sun, it begets an
opinion in us that the apparition is in the cloud. In like manner,
this same subtle invention of love-sophistry in generous and noble
souls causes a repercussion of the memory from objects that here
appear and are called beautiful, to the beauty really divine, truly
amiable and happy, and by all admired. But most people pursuing and
taking hold of the fancied image of this beauty in boys and women, as
it were seen in a mirror, reap nothing more assured and certain than
a little pleasure mixed with pain. But this seems to be no more than
a delirium or dizziness of the vulgar sort, beholding their empty and
unsatisfied desires in the clouds, as it were in so many shadows; like
children who, thinking to catch the rainbow in their hands, snatch at
the apparition that presents itself before their eyes. But a generous
and modest lover observes another method; for his contemplations
reflect only on that beauty which is divine and perceptible by the
understanding; but lighting upon the beauty of a visible body, and
making use of it as a kind of organ of the memory, he embraces and
loves, and by conversation argumenting his joy and satisfaction still
more and more inflames his understanding. But neither do these lovers
conversing with bodies rest satisfied in this world with a desire and
admiration of this same light; neither when they are arrived at another
world after death, do they return hither again as fugitives, to hover
about the doors and mansions of new-married people and disturb their
dreams with ghosts and visions; which sort of visions really come only
from men and women given to pleasure and corporeal delights, who by no
means deserve the name and characters of true lovers. Whereas a lover
truly chaste and amorous, being got to the true mansion of beauty,
and there conversing with it as much as it is lawful for him to do,
mounted upon the wings of chaste desire, becomes pure and hallowed;
and being initiated into sacred orders, continues dancing and sporting
about his Deity, till returning again to the meadows of the Moon and
Venus, and there laid asleep, he becomes ready for a new nativity. But
these are points too high for the discourse which we have proposed to
ourselves.
To return therefore to our purpose; Love, according to Euripides, with
all the rest of the Gods, delights