Page:The Dialogues of Plato v. 1.djvu/565

 526

world, the enthusiasm for knowledge when first beaming upon mankind, the relativity of ideas to the human mind, and of the human mind to ideas, the faith in the invisible, the adoration of the eternal nature, are all included, consciously or unconsciously, in Plato's doctrine of love.

The successive speeches in praise of love are characteristic of the speakers, and contribute in various degrees to the final result ; they are all designed to prepare the way for Socrates, who gathers up the threads anew, and skims the highest points of each of them. But they are not to be regarded as the stages of an idea, rising above one another to a climax. They are fanciful, partly facetious performances, ' yet also having a certain measure of seriousness' (197 E), which the successive speakers dedicate to the god. All of them are rhetorical and poetical rather than dialectical, but glimpses of truth appear in them. When Eryxi- machus says that the principles of music are simple in themselves, but confused in their application, he touches lightly upon a difficulty which has troubled the moderns as well as the ancients in music, and may be extended to the other applied sciences. That confusion begins in the concrete, was the natural feeling of a mind dwelling in the world of ideas. When Pausanias remarks that personal attachments are inimical to despots, the experience of Greek history confirms the truth of his remark. When Aristophanes declares that love is the desire of the whole, he expresses a feeling not unlike that of the German philosopher, who says that ' philosophy is home sickness.' When Agathon says that no man ' can be wronged of his own free will,' he is alluding playfully to a serious problem of Greek philosophy (cp. Arist. Nic. Ethics, v. 9). So naturally does Plato mingle jest and earnest, truth and opinion in the same work.

The characters — of Phaedrus, who has been the cause of more philosophical discussions than any other man, with the exception of Simmias the Theban (Phaedrus 242 B) ; of Aristophanes, who disguises under comic imagery a serious purpose ; of Agathon, who in later life is satirized by Aristophanes in the Thesmo- phoriazusae, for his effeminate manners and the feeble rhythms of his verse ; of Alcibiades, who is the same strange contrast of great powers and great vices, which meets us in history- are drawn to the life ; and we may suppose the less-known characters