he will be impelled to contemplate beauty as it exists in activities and institutions, and to recognize that here, too, all beauty of soul is akin, and that next to it physical beauty, taken as a whole, is a poor thing in comparison. From morals he must be directed to the sciences and contemplate their beauty also, so that

gazing upon the vast ocean of beauty to which his attention is now turned, he may bring forth in the abundance of his love for good many magnificent sentiments and ideas, until at last, strengthened and increased in stature by this experience, he catches sight of one unique science, whose object is the beauty of which I am about to speak.

"This beauty is first of all eternal, neither coming into being nor passing away; it is not beautiful in part and ugly in part, nor is it beautiful only at certain times or in certain relationships. Nor again will this beauty appear as the beauty of a face or hands or anything else corporeal, or as the beauty of an idea, or as any beauty having its seat in something other than itself. It will be seen as absolute, self-existent, unique, eternal, all beautful things partaking of it, yet itself remaining changeless.

'When a man, starting from this sensible world and making his way upward by a right use of his feelings of attachment for youths, begins to catch sight of that beauty, he is very near his goal. For this is the right way of approaching the mysteries of love, to begin with examples of beauty in this world, from one instance of physical beauty to two, and from two to all, then from physical

beauty to moral beauty, and from moral beauty to the beauty of knowledge, until from knowledge of various kinds one arrives at the supreme knowledge whose sole object is that absolute beauty, and knows at last what absolute beauty is.

"This above all others, my dear Socrates," Diotima concludes, 'is the region where a man's life should be spent. Once having seen that absolute beauty, you will not value it in terms of gold or of rich clothing, or of the beauty of young men, the sight of whom at present throws. many like you into such an ecstasy that, provided you could always enjoy the sight and company of your darlings, you would be content to go without food and drink, if that were possible. What may we suppose to be the felicity of the man who sees absolute beauty in its essence, pure and unalloyed, who, instead of a beauty limited to human flesh and color and a mass of perishable rubble, is able to apprehend divine beauty where it exists apart and alone? Do you think that it will be a poor life that a man leads, who has his gaze fixed in that direction, who contemplates absolute beauty with the appropriate faculty, and is in constant union with it? Do you not see that in that region alone.. he will be able to bring forth, not mere reflected images of goodness, but true goodness itself? Then, having brought forth and nurtured true goodness, he will have the privilege of being beloved of God and becoming, if ever a man can, immortal himself."

Concluding Extract

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