lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another.
For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not
appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which
the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has
only a dark and doubtful presentiment. Suppose Hephaestus, with his
instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to
them, 'What do you people want of one another?' they would be unable to
explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said:
'Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one
another's company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you
into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one,
and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and
after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of
two--I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are
satisfied to attain this?'--there is not a man of them who when he heard
the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and
melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very
expression of his ancient need (compare Arist. Pol.). And the reason is
that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire
and pursuit of the whole is called love. There was a time, I say, when we
were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed
us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians
(compare Arist. Pol.). And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a
danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like
the profile figures having only half a nose which are sculptured on
monuments, and that we shall be like tallies. Wherefore let us exhort all
men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the good, of which Love is
to us the lord and minister; and let no one oppose him--he is the enemy of
the gods who opposes him. For if we are friends of the God and at peace
with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this