political activity; from Eryximachus, that love is a universal phenomenon
and the great power of nature; from Aristophanes, that love is the child of
want, and is not merely the love of the congenial or of the whole, but (as
he adds) of the good; from Agathon, that love is of beauty, not however of
beauty only, but of birth in beauty. As it would be out of character for
Socrates to make a lengthened harangue, the speech takes the form of a
dialogue between Socrates and a mysterious woman of foreign extraction.
She elicits the final truth from one who knows nothing, and who, speaking
by the lips of another, and himself a despiser of rhetoric, is proved also
to be the most consummate of rhetoricians (compare Menexenus).

The last of the six discourses begins with a short argument which
overthrows not only Agathon but all the preceding speakers by the help of a
distinction which has escaped them. Extravagant praises have been ascribed
to Love as the author of every good; no sort of encomium was too high for
him, whether deserved and true or not. But Socrates has no talent for
speaking anything but the truth, and if he is to speak the truth of Love he
must honestly confess that he is not a good at all: for love is of the
good, and no man can desire that which he has. This piece of dialectics is
ascribed to Diotima, who has already urged upon Socrates the argument which
he urges against Agathon. That the distinction is a fallacy is obvious; it
is almost acknowledged to be so by Socrates himself. For he who has beauty
or good may desire more of them; and he who has beauty or good in himself
may desire beauty and good in others. The fallacy seems to arise out of a
confusion between the abstract ideas of good and beauty, which do not admit
of degrees, and their partial realization in individuals.

But Diotima, the prophetess of Mantineia, whose sacred and superhuman
character raises her above the ordinary proprieties of women, has taught
Socrates far more than this about the art and mystery of love. She has