Page:The Dialogues of Plato v. 1.djvu/569

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Eryximachus says, 'he makes a fair beginning, but a lame ending.'

Plato transposes the two next speeches, as in the Republic he would transpose the virtues (iv. 430 D) and the mathematical sciences (vii. 528 A). This is done partly to avoid monotony, partly for. the sake of making Aristophanes 'the cause of wit in others,' and also in order to bring the comic and tragic poet into juxtaposition, as if by accident. A suitable ' expectation ' of Aristophanes is raised by the ludicrous circumstance of his having the hiccough, which is appropriately cured by his sub- stitute, the physician Eryximachus. To fZryximachus Love is the good physician ; he sees everything as an intelligent physicist, and, like many professors of his art in modern times, attempts to reduce the moral to the physical; or recognizes one law of love which pervades them both. There are loves and strifes of the body as well as of the mind. Like Hippocrates the Asclepiad, he is a disciple of Heracleitus, whose conception of the harmony of opposites he explains in a new way as the harmony after discord ; to his common sense, as to that of many moderns as well as ancients, the identity of contradictories is an absurdity. His notion of love may be summed up as the harmony of *nan with himself in soul as well as body, and of all things in heaven and earth with one another.

Aristophanes is ready to laugh and make laugh before he opens his mouth, just as Socrates, true to his character, is ready to argue before he begins to speak. He expresses the very genius of the old comedy, its coarse and forcible imagery, and the licence of its language m speaking about the gods. He has no sophistical notions about love, which is brought back by him to its common- sense meaning of love between intelligent beings. His account of the origin of the sexes has the greatest (comic) probability and verisimilitude. Nothing in Aristophanes is more truly Aristo- phanic than the description of the human monster whirhng round on four arms and four legs, eight in all, with incredible rapidity. Yet there is a mixture of earnestness in this jest ; three serious principles seem to be insinuated : — first, that man cannot exist in isolation ; he must be reunited if he is to be perfected : secondly, that love is the mediator and reconciler of poor, divided human nature : thirdly, that the loves of this world are an