Symposium

Now then, said Socrates, keep carefully in mind what is the object of Love, and only tell me whether he desires the particular thing that is his object. Yes, to be sure, he replied. Has he or has he not the object of his desire and love when he desires and loves it? He does not have it, most likely, he said. Not as a likelihood, said Socrates, but as a necessity, consider if the desiring subject must have desire for something it lacks, and again, no desire if it has no lack. I at least, Agathon, am perfectly sure it is a necessity. How does it strike you? I am sure of it also, said he. Very good. Now could a tall man wish to be tall, or a strong man to be strong? By what has been admitted, this is impossible. Since, I suppose, the man in each case would not be lacking the quality mentioned. True. For if, being strong, he should wish to be strong, said Socrates, or being swift, to be swift, or being healthy, to be healthy,—since we are apt to suppose in these and all such cases that men of this or that sort, possessing these qualities, do also desire what they have already: I put this in, to prevent any misconception; these men, Agathon, if you consider, are bound to have at the very moment each thing that they have whether they wish it or not; and how, I ask, is a man going to desire that? No, when a person says, I being healthy, want to be healthy; being rich, I want to be rich; I desire the very things that I have—we shall tell him, My good sir, riches you possess, and health and strength, which you would like to possess in the future also: for the time now present you have them whether you would or no. When you say, I desire these present things, we suggest you are merely saying I wish these things now present to be present also in the future. Would he not admit our point? To this Agathon assented. And so, continued Socrates, a man may be said to love a thing not yet provided or possessed, when he would have the presence of certain things secured to him for ever in the future. Certainly, he said. Then such a person, and in general all who feel desire, feel it for what is not provided or present; for something they have not or are not or lack and that sort of thing is the object of desire and love? Assuredly, he said. Now then, said Socrates, let us agree to what we have so far concluded. First, is not Love directed to certain things of which, in the second place, he has a want?

Yes, he said. Then, granting this, recollect what things you named in our discussion as the objects of Love: if you like, I will remind you. What you said, I believe, was to the effect that the gods contrived the world from a love of beautiful things, for of ugly there was no love. Did you not say something of the sort? Yes, I did, said Agathon. And quite properly, my friend, said Socrates; then, such being the case, must not Love be only love of beauty, and not of ugliness? He assented. Well then, we have agreed that he loves what he lacks and has not? Yes, he replied. And what Love lacks and has not is beauty? That needs must be, he said. Well now, will you say that what lacks beauty, and in no wise possesses it, is beautiful?Surely not. So can you still allow Love to be beautiful, if this is the case? Whereupon Agathon said, I greatly fear, Socrates, I knew nothing of what I was talking about. Ah, your words were beautiful enough, Agathon; but pray give me one or two more: you hold, do you not, that good things are beautiful? I do. Then if Love lacks beautiful things, and good things are beautiful, he must lack good things too. I see no means, Socrates, of contradicting you, he replied; let it be as you say. No, it is Truth, my lovable Agathon, whom you cannot contradict: Socrates you easily may. The Speech of Socrates And now I shall let you alone, and proceed with the discourse upon Love which I heard one day from a Mantinean woman named Diotima: [*](These names suggest a connection respectively with prophecy and with the favor of Heaven.) in this subject she was skilled, and in many others too; for once, by bidding the Athenians offer sacrifices ten years before the plague, she procured them so much delay in the advent of the sickness. Well, I also had my lesson from her in love-matters; so now I will try and follow up the points on which Agathon and I have just agreed by narrating to you all on my own account, as well as I am able, the speech she delivered to me. So first, Agathon, I must unfold, in your manner of exposition, who and what sort of being is Love, and then I shall tell of his works. The readiest way, I think, will be to give my description that form of question and answer which the stranger woman used for hers that day. For I spoke to her in much the same terms as Agathon addressed just now to me, saying Love was a great god, and was of beautiful things; and she refuted me with the very arguments I have brought against our young friend, showing that by my account that god was neither beautiful nor good. How do you mean, Diotima? said I; is Love then ugly and bad? Peace, for shame! she replied: or do you imagine that whatever is not beautiful must needs be ugly?

To be sure I do.And what is not skilled, ignorant? Have you not observed that there is something halfway between skill and ignorance?What is that?You know, of course, that to have correct opinion, if you can give no reason for it, is neither full knowledge—how can an unreasoned thing be knowledge?—nor yet ignorance; for what hits on the truth cannot be ignorance. So correct opinion, I take it, is just in that position, between understanding and ignorance.Quite true, I said. Then do not compel what is not beautiful to be ugly, she said, or what is not good to be bad. Likewise of Love, when you find yourself admitting that he is not good nor beautiful, do not therefore suppose he must be ugly and bad, but something betwixt the two. And what of the notion, I asked, to which every one agrees, that he is a great god? Every one? People who do not know, she rejoined, or those who know also? I mean everybody in the world. At this she laughed and said, But how, Socrates, can those agree that he is a great god who say he is no god at all? What persons are they? I asked. You are one, she replied, and I am another. How do you make that out? I said. Easily, said she; tell me, do you not say that all gods are happy and beautiful? Or will you dare to deny that any god is beautiful and happy? Bless me! I exclaimed, not I. And do you not call those happy who possess good and beautiful things? Certainly I do. But you have admitted that Love, from lack of good and beautiful things, desires these very things that he lacks. Yes, I have. How then can he be a god, if he is devoid of things beautiful and good?By no means, it appears. So you see, she said, you are a person who does not consider Love to be a god. What then, I asked, can Love be? A mortal? Anything but that. Well what? As I previously suggested, between a mortal and an immortal. And what is that, Diotima? A great spirit, Socrates: for the whole of the spiritual [*](Δαίμονες and τὸ δαιμόνιον represent the mysterious agencies and influences by which the gods communicate with mortals.) is between divine and mortal. Possessing what power? I asked. Interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above: being midway between, it makes each to supplement the other, so that the whole is combined in one.

Through it are conveyed all divination and priestcraft concerning sacrifice and ritual and incantations, and all soothsaying and sorcery. God with man does not mingle: but the spiritual is the means of all society and converse of men with gods and of gods with men, whether waking or asleep. Whosoever has skill in these affairs is a spiritual man to have it in other matters, as in common arts and crafts, is for the mechanical. Many and multifarious are these spirits, and one of them is Love.From what father and mother sprung? I asked. That is rather a long story, she replied; but still, I will tell it you. When Aphrodite was born, the gods made a great feast, and among the company was Resource the son of Cunning. And when they had banqueted there came Poverty abegging, as well she might in an hour of good cheer, and hung about the door. Now Resource, grown tipsy with nectar—for wine as yet there was none—went into the garden of Zeus, and there, overcome with heaviness, slept. Then Poverty, being of herself so resourceless, devised the scheme of having a child by Resource, and lying down by his side she conceived Love. Hence it is that Love from the beginning has been attendant and minister to Aphrodite, since he was begotten on the day of her birth, and is, moreover, by nature a lover bent on beauty since Aphrodite is beautiful. Now, as the son of Resource and Poverty, Love is in a peculiar case. First, he is ever poor, and far from tender or beautiful as most suppose him: rather is he hard and parched, shoeless and homeless; on the bare ground always he lies with no bedding, and takes his rest on doorsteps and waysides in the open air; true to his mother’s nature, he ever dwells with want. But he takes after his father in scheming for all that is beautiful and good; for he is brave, strenuous and high-strung, a famous hunter, always weaving some stratagem; desirous and competent of wisdom, throughout life ensuing the truth; a master of jugglery, witchcraft, >and artful speech. By birth neither immortal nor mortal, in the selfsame day he is flourishing and alive at the hour when he is abounding in resource; at another he is dying, and then reviving again by force of his father’s nature: yet the resources that he gets will ever be ebbing away; so that Love is at no time either resourceless or wealthy, and furthermore, he stands midway betwixt wisdom and ignorance.