steps or stages, proceeding from the particulars of sense to the universal
of reason, and from one universal to many, which are finally reunited in a
single science (compare Rep.). At first immortality means only the
succession of existences; even knowledge comes and goes. Then follows, in
the language of the mysteries, a higher and a higher degree of initiation;
at last we arrive at the perfect vision of beauty, not relative or
changing, but eternal and absolute; not bounded by this world, or in or out
of this world, but an aspect of the divine, extending over all things, and
having no limit of space or time: this is the highest knowledge of which
the human mind is capable. Plato does not go on to ask whether the
individual is absorbed in the sea of light and beauty or retains his
personality. Enough for him to have attained the true beauty or good,
without enquiring precisely into the relation in which human beings stood
to it. That the soul has such a reach of thought, and is capable of
partaking of the eternal nature, seems to imply that she too is eternal
(compare Phaedrus). But Plato does not distinguish the eternal in man from
the eternal in the world or in God. He is willing to rest in the
contemplation of the idea, which to him is the cause of all things (Rep.),
and has no strength to go further.

The Symposium of Xenophon, in which Socrates describes himself as a pander,
and also discourses of the difference between sensual and sentimental love,
likewise offers several interesting points of comparison. But the
suspicion which hangs over other writings of Xenophon, and the numerous
minute references to the Phaedrus and Symposium, as well as to some of the
other writings of Plato, throw a doubt on the genuineness of the work. The
Symposium of Xenophon, if written by him at all, would certainly show that
he wrote against Plato, and was acquainted with his works. Of this
hostility there is no trace in the Memorabilia. Such a rivalry is more
characteristic of an imitator than of an original writer. The (so-called)