scribed, the business of the philosopher in general is described at the same time, and in order to designate his place in particular, it is only necessary to define the relation of his love and its object, to every other species and object of the same passion. Now, this easily appears to every reader to be the main subject of what Socrates here again repeats, as matter of former discussion between himself and Diotima. For it is scarcely possible that any one should be misled by the single fact, that this wise lady, when out of the more general idea of desire, she seeks for the proper idea of love in the more contracted sense, excludes the love of wisdom, with others like it, from this narrowed sphere. Or, if any one should take occasion from this circumstance to object to our explanation, let him only try whether it would have been possible to place the subject in that light which the purport of Diotima's speech required, without setting aside, by way of beginning, the endeavour after wisdom also, as coming under the general idea of desire, in order to obtain for love as its peculiar character, the desire to create. But starting from this, the whole discussion manifestly displays the uninterrupted gradation, not only from the pleasure arising from the contemplation of personal beauty, through that which every larger object, whether single or manifold, may occasion, to that immediate pleasure whose source is in the eternal beauty, which, without further contemplation of that which is particular and individual, displays itself to the mind's eye when practised and quickened by this order of training, but also, the gradation from the procreation of natural life through that of correct conception up to that participation, which ranges far beyond all master-skill in detail, in

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that immediate knowledge which alone beatifies and comprehends within itself all other good; so that it is to be shown how it is in philosophy only, that the greatest good is the object of that general desire for an ever-enduring possession, and to make this highest object immortal in a mortal subject, belongs to it alone as to the highest species of love.

We thus appear, accordingly, to have discovered the essential part of our whole work of art, in what Socrates says about love, and Alcibiades about Socrates For the former exhibits to us the proper nature of the philosopher, it may be under a totally different external form, but when more closely considered almost according to the same method, by means of the establishment of a general idea, and by the separation of the other species, as in the Sophist and Statesman, the nature of these two characters is described, while the life and real actions of the philosopher, with respect to which, as regards the Sophist and the Statesman, only a few scattered traces appear in these dialogues, are exhibited before us in that last panegyric of Alcibiades, in a picture, which though only half worked out, is at least finished as far as the outlines are concerned. Yet may we not pretend so far to discover the whole in this last half, that the earlier love-speeches are to be looked upon only as embellishment, or as devoted entirely to other subordinate points; but, although it might be an unsound Eros to love any one of these speeches, or regard it, as of any importance in itself, as Eryximachus the physician describes that passion as his own, yet must they have been necessary when taken in connection with the rest, and consequently each in its place and its kind, beautiful-and, certainly,

we may at all events assume, that the whole cannot be understood in its immediate connection with the rest of the works of Plato without them.

First, then, to continue, these speeches serve in a variety of ways to denote the sphere of love throughout its whole range, and to show further, how mortality begets upon mortality only what is mortal and transitory; and the desire to do this, is a morbid passion, and the left-hand love, with which we are already acquainted from other dialogues. Eryximachus, for instance, who enlarges the description given by Pausanias, mentions the cooking art, and consequently reminds us of the Gorgias, and the opposition in the constitution of man there treated of, so that we see how even that which is most opposed to philosophy in reference to its object, may still be united with it under the idea of love, as co-operative with it, and influential upon animated nature. Thus, they show also, how, if they who have not understood the real nature of the subject, but start only from the obscure feeling, collect and explain the particular phænomena, these phonomena all present a partial and one-sided appearance; and the particular details in them are again taken up in the speech of Socrates, who represents them as only conditionally and partially true, correcting what is wrong, and supplying what was wanting. We learn also in them, to examine by comparison what the common language of that period comprehended as belonging to the appellation of love, and to separate that which, coming under the more modern notion, does not belong to it in this place. And in this respect, particularly the speech of Eryximachus is remarkable, whose physiological and medicinal notion of love is ludicrously

introduced by means of the little interruption occasioned by the hiccough of Aristophanes, and for that very reason is not again particularly referred to in the speech of Socrates. And as these speeches show us the dif ference between the philosopher and the not-philosopher, in their subject-matter and ideas, so do they also, in enunciation and expression, partly by means of a loose, unconnected extravagance, partly by a corrupt musical rhetoric, and the application of sophistical expedientsboth of which, in the speech of Agathon immediately preceding that of Socrates, are pushed to the utmost. And here also we see a new trace of connection between our dialogue and the two preceding, in which likewise, as we have endeavoured to show, the polemics against the sophists as pretended dialecticians, and the rhetoricians and demagogues as pretended politicians, constitute no small part. In like manner these speeches, of which each is distinguished from the other by a peculiar manner, which the translator has endeavoured as far as possible to imitate, are certainly not deficient in Platonic polemics. For it is indeed hardly to be believed, that these peculiarities were merely dramatic, and intended to show the manner in which the characters introduced were generally accustomed to speak; since, as several among them do not seem even to have been authors, as Phædrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, and, supposing them to have been alive at the time of the appearance of the Banquet, were far from being generally known, it would have been lost labour to imitate them, and not worth the composition. Also, the mention of Gorgias does of itself lead us to quite different notions on the matter. For hardly can these polemics, dramatic indeed as they plainly are, have been directed against other

than well-known orators and authors, and indeed such as laboured after a theory which was the creation not of philosophy, but only the instrument of a false Eros, where one cannot avoid thinking particularly of the later schools of Gorgias and on those of Socrates; although the myth of Aristophanes in its whole style, the comic turn certainly excepted, so beautifully imitates those of the poets themselves, that it seems to me to bear a striking similarity to that told by Protagoras in the dialogue that bears his name. So that, upon the whole, Sydenham may certainly have been right when he conceived, that in this dialogue the persons imitated may be not so much those actually introduced to speak, as others represented under their name, only that he himself followed too slight hints, and was over hasty in his particular decision; wherein we will not imitate him, but leave the matter to other learned men, so much the rather, as it belongs not to our object to follow out such points.

But, on the other hand, without these speeches, the relation of the Symposium to other dialogues of Plato, namely the earliest, would not be near so open to recognition, and there is clearly much that refers to these dialogues intentionally introduced into it. Every reader, for instance, will naturally be reminded by this work of the Phædrus and Lysis, as when we were engaged with that dialogue we were compelled to refer in anticipation to this. To the Phædrus there appear references sufficient in the first speeches, especially where the relation of the lover to the beloved object is spoken of, to render it unnecessary expressly to bring them forward. But several of these speeches have, more especially, a peculiar reference to the Lysis,