loses his love he loses his character; whereas the noble love of the other
remains the same, although the object of his love is unworthy: for nothing
can be nobler than love for the sake of virtue. This is that love of the
heavenly goddess which is of great price to individuals and cities, making
them work together for their improvement.

The turn of Aristophanes comes next; but he has the hiccough, and therefore
proposes that Eryximachus the physician shall cure him or speak in his
turn. Eryximachus is ready to do both, and after prescribing for the
hiccough, speaks as follows:--

He agrees with Pausanias in maintaining that there are two kinds of love;
but his art has led him to the further conclusion that the empire of this
double love extends over all things, and is to be found in animals and
plants as well as in man. In the human body also there are two loves; and
the art of medicine shows which is the good and which is the bad love, and
persuades the body to accept the good and reject the bad, and reconciles
conflicting elements and makes them friends. Every art, gymnastic and
husbandry as well as medicine, is the reconciliation of opposites; and this
is what Heracleitus meant, when he spoke of a harmony of opposites: but in
strictness he should rather have spoken of a harmony which succeeds
opposites, for an agreement of disagreements there cannot be. Music too is
concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and
rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple, and we are not troubled with the
twofold love; but when they are applied in education with their
accompaniments of song and metre, then the discord begins. Then the old
tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and the coarse Polyhymnia, who must
be indulged sparingly, just as in my own art of medicine care must be taken
that the taste of the epicure be gratified without inflicting upon him the
attendant penalty of disease.