Page:The Dialogues of Plato v. 1.djvu/572

 Rh the greatest comprehension of knowledge and the burning in- Syni- tensity of love is a contradiction in nature, which may have existed in a far-off primeval age in the mind of some Hebrew prophet or other Eastern sage, but has now become an ima- gination only. Yet this ' passion of the reason ' is the theme of the Symposium of Plato. And as there is no impossibility in supposing that ' one king, or son of a king, may be a philo- sopher,' so also there is a probability that there may be some few — perhaps one or two in a whole generation — in whom the light of truth may not lack the warmth of desire. And if there be such natures, no one will be disposed to deny that ' from them flow most of the benefits of individuals and states ; ' and even from imperfect combinations of the two elements in teachers or statesmen great good may often arise. Yet there is a higher region in which love is not only felt, but satisfied, in the perfect beauty of eternal knowledge, beginning with the beauty of earthly things, and at last reaching a beauty in which all existence is seen to be harmonious and one. The limited affection is enlarged, and enabled to behold the ideal of all things. And here the highest summit which is reached in the Symposium is seen also to be the highest summit which is attained in the Republic, but approached from another side ; and there is ' a way upwards and downwards,' which is the same and not the same in both. The ideal beauty of the one is the ideal good of the other ; regarded not with the eye of knowledge, but of faith and desire ; and they are respectively the source of beauty and the source of good in all other things. And by the steps of a ' ladder reaching to heaven ' we pass from images of visible beauty (ciKovfc), and from the hypotheses of the Mathematical sciences, which are not yet based upon the idea of good, through the concrete to the abstract, and, by different paths arriving, behold the vision of the eternal (cp. Symp. 2tl wo-TTf/) eiraj»a/3a5/iOif rio-iv Rep. vi. 51 1 A, B oXov (TTijidafis ; Tf Kai opfias' also Phaedrus 247 ff.). Under one aspect 'the idea is love'; under another, 'truth.' In both the lover of wisdom is the 'spectator of all time and of all existence.' This is a 'mystery' in which Plato also obscurely intimates the union of the spiritual and fleshly, the interpenetration of the moral and intellectual faculties. fiosiuiii. Inihouuc- TION.