taught him that love is another aspect of philosophy. The same want in the
human soul which is satisfied in the vulgar by the procreation of children,
may become the highest aspiration of intellectual desire. As the Christian
might speak of hungering and thirsting after righteousness; or of divine
loves under the figure of human (compare Eph. 'This is a great mystery, but
I speak concerning Christ and the church'); as the mediaeval saint might
speak of the 'fruitio Dei;' as Dante saw all things contained in his love
of Beatrice, so Plato would have us absorb all other loves and desires in
the love of knowledge. Here is the beginning of Neoplatonism, or rather,
perhaps, a proof (of which there are many) that the so-called mysticism of
the East was not strange to the Greek of the fifth century before Christ.
The first tumult of the affections was not wholly subdued; there were
longings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

which no art could satisfy. To most men reason and passion appear to be
antagonistic both in idea and fact. The union of the greatest
comprehension of knowledge and the burning intensity 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 imagination 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 philosopher,' 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.