Plato Diotima
on Love ‘What
then is Love?’ I asked; ‘Is he mortal?’ ‘No.’ ‘What then?’
‘As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a
mean between the two.’ ‘What is he, Diotima?’ ‘He is a great
spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the
divine and the mortal.’ ‘And what,’ I said, ‘is his power?’
‘He interprets,’ she replied, ‘between gods and men, conveying and
taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men
the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the
chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and
through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and
mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation, find their way.
For God mingles not with man; but through Love all the intercourse, and
converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The
wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other wisdom, such as that
of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar. Now these spirits or
intermediate powers are many and diverse, and one of them is Love.’
‘And who,’ I said, ‘was his father, and who his mother?’ ‘The
tale,’ she said, ‘will take time; nevertheless I will tell you. On the
birthday of Aphrodite there was a feast of the gods, at which the god
Poros or Plenty, who is the son of Metis or Discretion, was one of the
guests. When the feast was over, Penia or Poverty, as the manner is on
such occasions, came about the doors to beg. Now Plenty who was the worse
for nectar (there was no wine in those days), went into the garden of Zeus
and fell into a heavy sleep, and Poverty considering her own straitened
circumstances, plotted to have a child by him, and accordingly she lay
down at his side and conceived love, who partly because he is naturally a
lover of the beautiful, and because Aphrodite is herself beautiful, and
also because he was born on her birthday, is her follower and attendant.
And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he
is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him;
and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on
the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in-the streets, or
at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always
in distress. Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is
always plotting against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising,
strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in
the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times,
terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. He is by nature neither
mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in
plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his
father’s nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing
out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he is
in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is
this: No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise
already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the
ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he
who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he
has no desire for that of which he feels no want.’ ‘But who then,
Diotima,’ I said, ‘are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the
wise nor the foolish?’ ‘A child may answer that question,’ she
replied; ‘they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one
of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the
beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher: or lover of wisdom,
and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the
ignorant. And of this too his birth is the cause; for his father is
wealthy and wise, and his mother poor and foolish. Such, my dear Socrates,
is the nature of the spirit Love. The error in your conception of him was
very natural, and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen out of a
confusion of love and the beloved, which made you think that love was all
beautiful. For the beloved is the truly beautiful, and delicate, and
perfect, and blessed; but the principle of love is of another nature, and
is such as I have described.’ I
said, ‘O thou stranger woman, thou sayest well; but, assuming Love to be
such as you say, what is the use of him to men?’ ‘That, Socrates,’
she replied, ‘I will attempt to unfold: of his nature and birth I have
already spoken; and you acknowledge that love is of the beautiful. But
some one will say: Of the beautiful in what, Socrates and Diotima?– or
rather let me put the question more clearly, and ask: When a man loves the
beautiful, what does he desire?’ I answered her ‘That the beautiful
may be his.’ ‘Still,’ she said, ‘the answer suggests a further
question: What is given by the possession of beauty?’ ‘To what you
have asked,° I replied, ‘I have no answer ready.’ ‘Then,’ she
said, ‘Let me put the word good in the place of the beautiful,
and repeat the question once more: If he who loves good, what is it then
that he loves?’ ‘The possession of the good,’ I said. ‘And what
does he gain who possesses the good?’ ‘Happiness,’ I replied;
‘there is less difficulty in answering that question.’ ‘Yes,’ she
said, ‘the happy are made happy by the acquisition of good things. Nor
is there any need to ask why a man desires happiness; the answer is
already final.’ ‘You are right.’ I said. ‘And is this wish and
this desire common to all? and do all men always desire their own good, or
only some men? – what say you?’ ‘All men,’ I replied; ‘the
desire is common to all.’ ‘Why, then,’ she rejoined, ‘are not all
men, Socrates, said to love, but only some them? whereas you say that all
men are always loving the same things.’ ‘I myself wonder,’ I said,
– why this is.’ ‘There is nothing to wonder at,’ she replied;
‘the reason is that one part of love is separated off and receives the
name of the whole, but the other parts have other names.’ ‘Give an
illustration,’ I said. She answered me as follows: ‘There is poetry,
which, as you know, is complex; and manifold. All creation or passage of
non-being into being is poetry or making, and the processes of all art are
creative; and the masters of arts are all poets or makers.’ ‘Very
true.’ ‘Still,’ she said, ‘you know that they are not called
poets, but have other names; only that portion of the art which is
separated off from the rest, and is concerned with music and metre, is
termed poetry, and they who possess poetry in this sense of the word are
called poets.’ ‘Very true,’ I said. ‘And the same holds of love.
For you may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is only
the great and subtle power of love; but they who are drawn towards him by
any other path, whether the path of money-making or gymnastics or
philosophy, are not called lovers – the name of the whole is
appropriated to those whose affection takes one form only – they alone
are said to love, or to be lovers.’ ‘I dare say,’ I replied, ‘that
you are right.’ ‘Yes,’ she added, ‘and you hear people say that
lovers are seeking for their other half; but I say that they are seeking
neither for the half of themselves, nor for the whole, unless the half or
the whole be also a good. And they will cut off their own hands and feet
and cast them away, if they are evil; for they love not what is their own,
unless perchance there be some one who calls what belongs to him the good,
and what belongs to another the evil. For there is nothing which men love
but the good. Is there anything?’ ‘Certainly, I should say, that there
is nothing.’ ‘Then,’ she said, ‘the simple truth is, that men love
the good.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘To which must be added that they love
the possession of the good?’ ‘Yes, that must be added.’ ‘And not
only the possession, but the everlasting possession of the good?’
‘That must be added too.’ ‘Then love,’ she said, ‘may be
described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the
good?’ ‘That is most true.’ ‘Then
if this be the nature of love, can you tell me further,’ she said,
‘what is the manner of the pursuit? what are they doing who show all
this eagerness and heat which is called love? and what is the object which
they have in view? Answer me.’ ‘Nay, Diotima,’ I replied, ‘if I
had known, I should not have wondered at your wisdom, neither should I
have come to learn from you about this very matter.’ ‘Well,’ she
said, ‘I will teach you – The object which they have in view is birth
in beauty, whether of body or, soul.’ ‘I do not understand you,’ I
said; ‘the oracle requires an explanation.’ ‘I will make my meaning
clearer,’ she replied. ‘I mean to say, that all men are bringing to
the birth in their bodies and in their souls. There is a certain age at
which human nature is desirous of procreation-procreation which must be in
beauty and not in deformity; and this procreation is the union of man and
woman, and is a divine thing; for conception and generation are an
immortal principle in the mortal creature, and in the inharmonious they
can never be. But the deformed is always inharmonious with the divine, and
the beautiful harmonious. Beauty, then, is the destiny or goddess of
parturition who presides at birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty,
the conceiving power is propitious, and diffusive, and benign, and begets
and bears fruit: at the sight of ugliness she frowns and contracts and has
a sense of pain, and turns away, and shrivels up, and not without a pang
refrains from conception. And this is the reason why, when the hour of
conception arrives, and the teeming nature is full, there is such a
flutter and ecstasy about beauty whose approach is the alleviation of the
pain of travail. For love, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of
the beautiful only.’ ‘What then?’ ‘The love of generation and of
birth in beauty.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, indeed,’ she replied.
‘But why of generation?’ ‘Because to the mortal creature, generation
is a sort of eternity and immortality,’ she replied; ‘and if, as has
been already admitted, love is of the everlasting possession of the good,
all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: Wherefore
love is of immortality.’ All
this she taught me at various times when she spoke of love. And I remember
her once saying to me, ‘What is the cause, Socrates, of love, and the
attendant desire? See you not how all animals, birds, as well as beasts,
in their desire of procreation, are in agony when they take the infection
of love, which begins with the desire of union; whereto is added the care
of offspring, on whose behalf the weakest are ready to battle against the
strongest even to the uttermost, and to die for them, and will, let
themselves be tormented with hunger or suffer anything in order to
maintain their young. Man may be supposed to act thus from reason; but why
should animals have these passionate feelings? Can you tell me why?’
Again I replied that I did not know. She said to me: ‘And do you expect
ever to become a master in the art of love, if you do not know this?’
‘But I have told you already, Diotima, that my ignorance is the reason
why I come to you; for I am conscious that I want a teacher; tell me then
the cause of this and of the other mysteries of love.’ ‘Marvel not,’
she said, ‘if you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have
several times acknowledged; for here again, and on the same principle too,
the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to be everlasting and
immortal: and this is only to be attained by generation, because
generation always leaves behind a new existence in the place of the old.
Nay even in the life, of the same individual there is succession and not
absolute unity: a man is called the same, and yet in the short interval
which elapses between youth and age, and in which every animal is said to
have life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and
reparation-hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are always
changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the soul, whose
habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain
the same in any one of us, but are always coming and going; and equally
true of knowledge, and what is still more surprising to us mortals, not
only do the sciences in general spring up and decay, so that in respect of
them we are never the same; but each of them individually experiences a
like change. For what is implied in the word recollection, but the
departure of knowledge, which is ever being forgotten, and is renewed and
preserved by recollection, and appears to be the same although in reality
new, according to that law of succession by which all mortal things are
preserved, not absolutely the same, but by substitution, the old worn-out
mortality leaving another new and similar existence behind unlike the
divine, which is always the same and not another? And in this way,
Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality;
but the immortal in another way. Marvel not then at the love which all men
have of their offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the
sake of immortality.’ I
was astonished at her words, and said: ‘Is this really true, O thou wise
Diotima?’ And she answered with all the authority of an accomplished
sophist: ‘Of that, Socrates, you may be assured – think only of the
ambition of men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways,
unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of
fame. They are ready to run all risks greater far than they would have for
their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and even
to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal.
Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to save Admetus, or Achilles
to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order to preserve the kingdom
for his sons, if they had not imagined that the memory of their virtues,
which still survives among us, would be immortal? Nay,’ she said, ‘I
am persuaded that all men do all things, and the better they are the more
they do them, in hope of the glorious fame of immortal virtue; for they
desire the immortal.’ ‘Those
who are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and beget
children-this is the character of their love; their offspring, as they
hope, will preserve their memory and giving them the blessedness and
immortality which they desire in the future. But souls which are pregnant
– for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than
in their bodies conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or
contain. And what are these conceptions? – wisdom and virtue in general.
And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name
inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far is that which
is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called
temperance and justice. And he who in youth has the seed of these
implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity
desires to beget and generate. He wanders about seeking beauty that he may
beget offspring – for in deformity he will beget nothing – and
naturally embraces the beautiful rather than the deformed body; above all
when he finds fair and noble and well-nurtured soul, he embraces the two
in one person, and to such an one he is full of speech about virtue and
the nature and pursuits of a good man; and he tries to educate him; and at
the touch of the beautiful which is ever present to his memory, even when
absent, he brings forth that which he had conceived long before, and in
company with him tends that which he brings forth; and they are married by
a far nearer tie and have a closer friendship than those who beget mortal
children, for the children who are their common offspring are fairer and
more immortal. Who, when he thinks of Homer and Hesiod and other great
poets, would not rather have their children than ordinary human ones? Who
would not emulate them in the creation of children such as theirs, which
have preserved their memory and given them everlasting glory? Or who would
not have such children as Lycurgus left behind him to be the saviours, not
only of Lacedaemon, but of Hellas, as one may say? There is Solon, too,
who is the revered father of Athenian laws; and many others there are in
many other places, both among hellenes and barbarians, who have given to
the world many noble works, and have been the parents of virtue of every
kind; and many temples have been raised in their honour for the sake of
children such as theirs; which were never raised in honour of any one, for
the sake of his mortal children.’ ‘These
are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates, may
enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of these,
and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, I know
not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do my utmost to inform
you, and do you follow if you can. For he who would proceed aright in this
matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be
guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only-out of that he
should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the
beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of
form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize
that the beauty in every form is and the same! And when he perceives this
he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem
a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next
stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than
the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a
little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will
search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young,
until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions
and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family,
and that personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he
will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a
servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution,
himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and
contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble
thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he
grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a
single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I will
proceed; please to give me your very best attention.’ ‘He
who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has
learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes
toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and
this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils) – a nature
which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or
waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in
another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at
another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair
to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any
other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or
existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven or
in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple,
and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any
change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all
other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true
love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the
true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to
begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that
other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and
from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and
from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at
the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of
beauty is. This, my dear Socrates,’ said the stranger of Mantineia,
‘is that life above all others which man should live, in the
contemplation of beauty absolute; a beauty which if you once beheld, you
would see not to be after the measure of gold, and garments, and fair boys
and youths, whose presence now entrances you; and you and many a one would
be content to live seeing them only and conversing with them without meat
or drink, if that were possible-you only want to look at them and to be
with them. But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty – the divine
beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the
pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human
life-thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and
divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye
of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but
realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing
forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be
immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?’ “Such,
Phaedrus – and I speak not only to you, but to all of you – were the
words of Diotima; and I am persuaded of their truth. And being persuaded
of them, I try to persuade others, that in the attainment of this end
human nature will not easily find a helper better than love: And
therefore, also, I say that every man ought to honour him as I myself
honour him, and walk in his ways, and exhort others to do the same, and
praise the power and spirit of love according to the measure of my ability
now and ever.” “The words which I have spoken, you, Phaedrus, may call an encomium of love, or anything else which you please.”
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