Complete Works (109 page)

Then, however, Zeus took pity on them, and came up with another plan: he moved their genitals around to the front! Before then, you see, they [c] used to have their genitals outside, like their faces, and they cast seed and made children, not in one another, but in the ground, like cicadas. So Zeus brought about this relocation of genitals, and in doing so he invented interior reproduction,
by
the man
in
the woman. The purpose of this was so that, when a man embraced a woman, he would cast his seed and they would have children; but when male embraced male, they would at least have the satisfaction of intercourse, after which they could stop embracing, [d] return to their jobs, and look after their other needs in life. This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other. Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

Each of us, then, is a “matching half” of a human whole, because each was sliced like a flatfish, two out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him. That’s why a man who is split from the double sort (which used to be called “androgynous”) runs after women. Many [e] lecherous men have come from this class, and so do the lecherous women who run after men. Women who are split from a woman, however, pay no attention at all to men; they are oriented more towards women, and lesbians come from this class. People who are split from a male are male-oriented. While they are boys, because they are chips off the male block, they love men and enjoy lying with men and being embraced by men;
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those are the best of boys and lads, because they are the most manly in their nature. Of course, some say such boys are shameless, but they’re lying. It’s not because they have no shame that such boys do this, you see, but because they are bold and brave and masculine, and they tend to cherish what is like themselves. Do you want me to prove it? Look, these are the only kind of boys who grow up to be real men in politics. When [b] they’re grown men, they are lovers of young men, and they naturally pay no attention to marriage or to making babies, except insofar as they are required by local custom. They, however, are quite satisfied to live their lives with one another unmarried. In every way, then, this sort of man grows up as a lover of young men and a lover of Love, always rejoicing in his own kind.

And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it’s to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of [c] belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don’t want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.

These are the people who finish out their lives together and still cannot say what it is they want from one another. No one would think it is the intimacy of sex—that mere sex is the reason each lover takes so great and deep a joy in being with the other. It’s obvious that the soul of every lover [d] longs for something else; his soul cannot say what it is, but like an oracle it has a sense of what it wants, and like an oracle it hides behind a riddle. Suppose two lovers are lying together and Hephaestus
¹⁷
stands over them with his mending tools, asking, “What is it you human beings really want from each other?” And suppose they’re perplexed, and he asks them again: “Is this your heart’s desire, then—for the two of you to become parts of the same whole, as near as can be, and never to separate, day or night? Because if that’s your desire, I’d like to weld you together and join you into something that is naturally whole, so that the two of you are made [e] into one. Then the two of you would share one life, as long as you lived, because you would be one being, and by the same token, when you died, you would be one and not two in Hades, having died a single death. Look at your love, and see if this is what you desire: wouldn’t this be all the good fortune you could want?”

Surely you can see that no one who received such an offer would turn it down; no one would find anything else that he wanted. Instead, everyone would think he’d found out at last what he had always wanted: to come together and melt together with the one he loves, so that one person emerged from two. Why should this be so? It’s because, as I said, we used to be complete wholes in our original nature, and now “Love” is the name
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for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.

Long ago we were united, as I said; but now the god has divided us as punishment for the wrong we did him, just as the Spartans divided the Arcadians.
¹⁸
So there’s a danger that if we don’t keep order before the gods, we’ll be split in two again, and then we’ll be walking around in the condition of people carved on gravestones in bas-relief, sawn apart between the nostrils, like half dice. We should encourage all men, therefore, to treat [b] the gods with all due reverence, so that we may escape this fate and find wholeness instead. And we will, if Love is our guide and our commander. Let no one work against him. Whoever opposes Love is hateful to the gods, but if we become friends of the god and cease to quarrel with him, then we shall find the young men that are meant for us and win their love, as very few men do nowadays.

[c] Now don’t get ideas, Eryximachus, and turn this speech into a comedy. Don’t think I’m pointing this at Pausanias and Agathon. Probably, they both do belong to the group that are entirely masculine in nature. But I am speaking about everyone, men and women alike, and I say there’s just one way for the human race to flourish: we must bring love to its perfect conclusion, and each of us must win the favors of his very own young man, so that he can recover his original nature. If that is the ideal, then, of course, the nearest approach to it is best in present circumstances, and that is to win the favor of young men who are naturally sympathetic to us.

[d] If we are to give due praise to the god who can give us this blessing, then, we must praise Love. Love does the best that can be done for the time being: he draws us towards what belongs to us. But for the future, Love promises the greatest hope of all: if we treat the gods with due reverence, he will restore to us our original nature, and by healing us, he will make us blessed and happy.

“That,” he said, “is my speech about Love, Eryximachus. It is rather different from yours. As I begged you earlier, don’t make a comedy of it. [e] I’d prefer to hear what all the others will say—or, rather, what each of them will say, since Agathon and Socrates are the only ones left.”

“I found your speech delightful,” said Eryximachus, “so I’ll do as you say. Really, we’ve had such a rich feast of speeches on Love, that if I couldn’t vouch for the fact that Socrates and Agathon are masters of the art of love, I’d be afraid that they’d have nothing left to say. But as it is, I have no fears on this score.”

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Then Socrates said, “That’s because
you
did beautifully in the contest, Eryximachus. But if you ever get in my position, or rather the position I’ll be in after Agathon’s spoken so well, then you’ll really be afraid. You’ll be at your wit’s end, as I am now.”

“You’re trying to bewitch me, Socrates,” said Agathon, “by making me think the audience expects great things of my speech, so I’ll get flustered.” [b]

“Agathon!” said Socrates, “How forgetful do you think I am? I saw how brave and dignified you were when you walked right up to the theater platform along with the actors and looked straight out at that enormous audience. You were about to put your own writing on display, and you weren’t the least bit panicked. After seeing that, how could I expect you to be flustered by us, when we are so few?”

“Why, Socrates,” said Agathon. “You must think I have nothing but theater audiences on my mind! So you suppose I don’t realize that, if you’re intelligent, you find a few sensible men much more frightening than a senseless crowd?”

“No,” he said, “It wouldn’t be very handsome of me to think you crude [c] in any way, Agathon. I’m sure that if you ever run into people you consider wise, you’ll pay more attention to them than to ordinary people. But you can’t suppose we’re in that class; we were at the theater too, you know, part of the ordinary crowd. Still, if you did run into any wise men, other than yourself, you’d certainly be ashamed at the thought of doing anything ugly in front of them. Is that what you mean?”

‘That’s true,” he said.

“On the other hand, you wouldn’t be ashamed to do something ugly [d] in front of ordinary people. Is that it?”

At that point Phaedrus interrupted: “Agathon, my friend, if you answer Socrates, he’ll no longer care whether we get anywhere with what we’re doing here, so long as he has a partner for discussion. Especially if he’s handsome. Now, like you, I enjoy listening to Socrates in discussion, but it is my duty to see to the praising of Love and to exact a speech from every one of this group. When each of you two has made his offering to the god, then you can have your discussion.” [e]

“You’re doing a beautiful job, Phaedrus,” said Agathon. “There’s nothing to keep me from giving my speech. Socrates will have many opportunities for discussion later.”

I wish first to speak of how I ought to speak, and only then to speak. In my opinion, you see, all those who have spoken before me did not so much celebrate the god as congratulate human beings on the good things that come to them from the god. But who it is who gave these gifts, what he is like—no one has spoken about that. Now, only one method is correct
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for every praise, no matter whose: you must explain what qualities in the subject of your speech enable him to give the benefits for which we praise him. So now, in the case of Love, it is right for us to praise him first for what he is and afterwards for his gifts.

I maintain, then, that while all the gods are happy, Love—if I may say so without giving offense—is the happiest of them all, for he is the most beautiful and the best. His great beauty lies in this: First, Phaedrus, he is [b] the youngest of the gods.
¹⁹
He proves my point himself by fleeing old age in headlong flight, fast-moving though it is (that’s obvious—it comes after us faster than it should). Love was born to hate old age and will come nowhere near it. Love always lives with young people and is one of them: the old story holds good that like is always drawn to like. And though on many other points I agree with Phaedrus, I do not agree with this: that [c] Love is more ancient than Cronus and Iapetus. No, I say that he is the youngest of the gods and stays young forever.

Those old stories Hesiod and Parmenides tell about the gods—those things happened under Necessity, not Love, if what they say is true. For not one of all those violent deeds would have been done—no castrations, no imprisonments—if Love had been present among them. There would have been peace and brotherhood instead, as there has been now as long as Love has been king of the gods.

[d] So he is young. And besides being young, he is delicate. It takes a poet as good as Homer to show how delicate the god is. For Homer says that Mischief is a god and that she is delicate—well, that her feet are delicate, anyway! He says:

… hers are delicate feet: not on the ground
Does she draw nigh; she walks instead upon the heads of men.
²⁰

[e] A lovely proof, I think, to show how delicate she is: she doesn’t walk on anything hard; she walks only on what is soft. We shall use the same proof about Love, then, to show that he is delicate. For he walks not on earth, not even on people’s skulls, which are not really soft at all, but in the softest of all the things that are, there he walks, there he has his home. For he makes his home in the characters, in the souls, of gods and men—and not even in every soul that comes along: when he encounters a soul with a harsh character, he turns away; but when he finds a soft and gentle character, he settles down in it. Always, then, he is touching with his feet
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and with the whole of himself what is softest in the softest places. He must therefore be most delicate.

He is youngest, then, and most delicate; in addition he has a fluid, supple shape. For if he were hard, he would not be able to enfold a soul completely or escape notice when he first entered it or withdrew. Besides, his graceful good looks prove that he is balanced and fluid in his nature. Everyone knows that Love has extraordinary good looks, and between ugliness and Love there is unceasing war.

And the exquisite coloring of his skin! The way the god consorts with [b] flowers shows that. For he never settles in anything, be it a body or a soul, that cannot flower or has lost its bloom. His place is wherever it is flowery and fragrant; there he settles, there he stays.

Enough for now about the beauty of the god, though much remains still to be said. After this, we should speak of Love’s moral character.
²¹
The main point is that Love is neither the cause nor the victim of any injustice; he does no wrong to gods or men, nor they to him. If anything has an effect on him, it is never by violence, for violence never touches Love. [c] And the effects he has on others are not forced, for every service we give to love we give willingly. And whatever one person agrees on with another, when both are willing, that is right and just; so say “the laws that are kings of society.”
²²

And besides justice, he has the biggest share of moderation.
²³
For moderation, by common agreement, is power over pleasures and passions, and no pleasure is more powerful than Love! But if they are weaker, they are under the power of Love, and
he
has the power; and because he has power over pleasures and passions, Love is exceptionally moderate.

And as for manly bravery, “Not even Ares can stand up to” Love!
²⁴
For [d] Ares has no hold on Love, but Love does on Ares—love of Aphrodite, so runs the tale.
²⁵
But he who has hold is more powerful than he who is held; and so, because Love has power over the bravest of the others, he is bravest of them all.