Plato Pausanias On Love “Phaedrus,”
he said, “the argument has not been set before us, I think, quite in the
right form: we should not be called upon to praise Love in such an
indiscriminate manner. If there were only one Love, then what you said
would be well enough; but since there are more Loves than one, you should
have begun by determining which of them was to be the theme of our
praises. I will amend this defect; and first of all I would tell you which
Love is deserving of praise, and then try to hymn the praiseworthy one in
a manner worthy of him. For we all know that Love is inseparable from
Aphrodite, and if there were only one Aphrodite there would be only one
Love; but as there are two goddesses there must be two Loves.” “And
am I not right in asserting that there are two goddesses? The elder one,
having no mother, who is called the heavenly Aphrodite – she is the
daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is the daughter of Zeus and Dione –
her we call common; and the Love who is her fellow-worker is rightly named
common, as the other love is called heavenly. All the gods ought to have
praise given to them, but not without distinction of their natures; and
therefore I must try to distinguish the characters of the two Loves. Now
actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for
example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these
actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in
this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well
done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like
manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble
and worthy of praise. The Love who is the offspring of the common
Aphrodite is essentially common, and has no discrimination, being such as
the meaner sort of men feel, and is apt to be of women as well as of
youths, and is of the body rather than of the soul-the most foolish beings
are the objects of this love which desires only to gain an end, but never
thinks of accomplishing the end nobly, and therefore does good and evil
quite indiscriminately. The goddess who is his mother is far younger than
the other, and she was born of the union of the male and female, and
partakes of both.” “But
the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite is derived from a mother in whose
birth the female has no part – she is from the male only – this is
that love which is of youths, and the goddess being older, there is
nothing of wantonness in her. Those who are inspired by this love turn to
the male, and delight in him who is the more valiant and intelligent
nature; any one may recognise the pure enthusiasts in the very character
of their attachments. For they love not boys, but intelligent, beings
whose reason is beginning to be developed, much about the time at which
their beards begin to grow. And in choosing young men to be their
companions, they mean to be faithful to them, and pass their whole life in
company with them, not to take them in their inexperience, and deceive
them, and play the fool with them, or run away from one to another of
them. But the love of young boys should be forbidden by law, because their
future is uncertain; they may turn out good or bad, either in body or
soul, and much noble enthusiasm may be thrown away upon them; in this
matter the good are a law to themselves, and the coarser sort of lovers
ought to be restrained by force; as we restrain or attempt to restrain
them from fixing their affections on women of free birth. These are the
persons who bring a reproach on love; and some have been led to deny the
lawfulness of such attachments because they see the impropriety and evil
of them; for surely nothing that is decorously and lawfully done can
justly be censured.” “Now
here and in Lacedaemon the rules about love are perplexing, but in most
cities they are simple and easily intelligible; in Elis and Boeotia, and
in countries having no gifts of eloquence, they are very straightforward;
the law is simply in favour of these connexions, and no one, whether young
or old, has anything to say to their discredit; the reason being, as I
suppose, that they are men of few words in those parts, and therefore the
lovers do not like the trouble of pleading their suit. In Ionia and other
places, and generally in countries which are subject to the barbarians,
the custom is held to be dishonourable; loves of youths share the evil
repute in which philosophy and gymnastics are held because they are
inimical to tyranny; for the interests of rulers require that their
subjects should be poor in spirit and that there should be no strong bond
of friendship or society among them, which love, above all other motives,
is likely to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants-learned by experience; for
the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius had strength which
undid their power. And, therefore, the ill-repute into which these
attachments have fallen is to be ascribed to the evil condition of those
who make them to be ill-reputed; that is to say, to the self-seeking of
the governors and the cowardice of the governed; on the other hand, the
indiscriminate honour which is given to them in some countries is
attributable to the laziness of those who hold this opinion of them. In
our own country a far better principle prevails, but, as I was saying, the
explanation of it is rather perplexing. For, observe that open loves are
held to be more honourable than secret ones, and that the love of the
noblest and highest, even if their persons are less beautiful than others,
is especially honourable.” “Consider,
too, how great is the encouragement which all the world gives to the
lover; neither is he supposed to be doing anything dishonourable; but if
he succeeds he is praised, and if he fail he is blamed. And in the pursuit
of his love the custom of mankind allows him to do many strange things,
which philosophy would bitterly censure if they were done from any motive
of interest, or wish for office or power. He may pray, and entreat, and
supplicate, and swear, and lie on a mat at the door, and endure a slavery
worse than that of any slave-in any other case friends and enemies would
be equally ready to prevent him, but now there is no friend who will be
ashamed of him and admonish him, and no enemy will charge him with
meanness or flattery; the actions of a lover have a grace which ennobles
them; and custom has decided that they are highly commendable and that
there no loss of character in them; and, what is strangest of all, he only
may swear and forswear himself (so men say), and the gods will forgive his
transgression, for there is no such thing as a lover’s oath. Such is the
entire liberty which gods and men have allowed the lover, according to the
custom which prevails in our part of the world. From this point of view a
man fairly argues in Athens to love and to be loved is held to be a very
honourable thing. But when parents forbid their sons to talk with their
lovers, and place them under a tutor’s care, who is appointed to see to
these things, and their companions and equals cast in their teeth anything
of the sort which they may observe, and their elders refuse to silence the
reprovers and do not rebuke them-any one who reflects on all this will, on
the contrary, think that we hold these practices to be most disgraceful.
But, as I was saying at first, the truth as I imagine is, that whether
such practices are honourable or whether they are dishonourable is not a
simple question; they are honourable to him who follows them honourably,
dishonourable to him who follows them dishonourably. There is dishonour in
yielding to the evil, or in an evil manner; but there is honour in
yielding to the good, or in an honourable manner.” “Evil
is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as
he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself
unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is
over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and
promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it
becomes one with the everlasting. The custom of our country would have
both of them proven well and truly, and would have us yield to the one
sort of lover and avoid the other, and therefore encourages some to
pursue, and others to fly; testing both the lover and beloved in contests
and trials, until they show to which of the two classes they respectively
belong. And this is the reason why, in the first place, a hasty attachment
is held to be dishonourable, because time is the true test of this as of
most other things; and secondly there is a dishonour in being overcome by
the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether a man is
frightened into surrender by the loss of them, or, having experienced the
benefits of money and political corruption, is unable to rise above the
seductions of them. For none of these things are of a permanent or lasting
nature; not to mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from them.
There remains, then, only one way of honourable attachment which custom
allows in the beloved, and this is the way of virtue; for as we admitted
that any service which the lover does to him is not to be accounted
flattery or a dishonour to himself, so the beloved has one way only of
voluntary service which is not dishonourable, and this is virtuous
service.” “For
we have a custom, and according to our custom any one who does service to
another under the idea that he will be improved by him either in wisdom,
or, in some other particular of virtue-such a voluntary service, I say, is
not to be regarded as a dishonour, and is not open to the charge of
flattery. And these two customs, one the love of youth, and the other the
practice of philosophy and virtue in general, ought to meet in one, and
then the beloved may honourably indulge the lover. For when the lover and
beloved come together, having each of them a law, and the lover thinks
that he is right in doing any service which he can to his gracious loving
one; and the other that he is right in showing any kindness which he can
to him who is making him wise and good; the one capable of communicating
wisdom and virtue, the other seeking to acquire them with a view to
education and wisdom, when the two laws of love are fulfilled and meet in
one-then, and then only, may the beloved yield with honour to the lover.
Nor when love is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being
deceived, but in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or not
being deceived. For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression
that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to
be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that
he would give himself up to any one’s ‘uses base’ for the sake of
money; but this is not honourable. And on the same principle he who gives
himself to a lover because he is a good man, and in the hope that he will
be improved by his company, shows himself to be virtuous, even though the
object of his affection turn out to be a villain, and to have no virtue;
and if he is deceived he has committed a noble error. For he has proved
that for his part he will do anything for anybody with a view to virtue
and improvement, than which there can be nothing nobler. Thus noble in
every case is the acceptance of another for the sake of virtue. This is
that love which is the love of the heavenly godess, and is heavenly, and
of great price to individuals and cities, making the lover and the beloved
alike eager in the work of their own improvement. But all other loves are
the offspring of the other, who is the common goddess. To you, Phaedrus, I
offer this my contribution in praise of love, which is as good as I could
make extempore.” Pausanias
came to a pause – “this is the balanced way in which I have been
taught by the wise to speak,” and Aristodemus said that the turn of
Aristophanes was next, but either he had eaten too much, or from some
other cause he had the hiccough, and was obliged to change turns with
Eryximachus the physician, who was reclining on the couch below him.
“Eryximachus, he said, you ought either to stop my hiccough, or to speak
in my turn until I have left off.” “I
will do both,” said Eryximachus: “I will speak in your turn, and do
you speak in mine; and while I am speaking let me recommend you to hold
your breath, and if after you have done so for some time the hiccough is
no better, then gargle with a little water; and if it still continues,
tickle your nose with something and sneeze; and if you sneeze once or
twice, even the most violent hiccough is sure to go. I will do as you
prescribe, said Aristophanes, and now get on. ”
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