good, and therefore, in wanting and desiring the beautiful, love also wants
and desires the good. Socrates professes to have asked the same questions
and to have obtained the same answers from Diotima, a wise woman of
Mantinea, who, like Agathon, had spoken first of love and then of his
works. Socrates, like Agathon, had told her that Love is a mighty god and
also fair, and she had shown him in return that Love was neither, but in a
mean between fair and foul, good and evil, and not a god at all, but only a
great demon or intermediate power (compare the speech of Eryximachus) who
conveys to the gods the prayers of men, and to men the commands of the
gods.

Socrates asks: Who are his father and mother? To this Diotima replies
that he is the son of Plenty and Poverty, and partakes of the nature of
both, and is full and starved by turns. Like his mother he is poor and
squalid, lying on mats at doors (compare the speech of Pausanias); like his
father he is bold and strong, and full of arts and resources. Further, he
is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge:--in this he resembles the
philosopher who is also in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. Such
is the nature of Love, who is not to be confused with the beloved.

But Love desires the beautiful; and then arises the question, What does he
desire of the beautiful? He desires, of course, the possession of the
beautiful;--but what is given by that? For the beautiful let us substitute
the good, and we have no difficulty in seeing the possession of the good to
be happiness, and Love to be the desire of happiness, although the meaning
of the word has been too often confined to one kind of love. And Love
desires not only the good, but the everlasting possession of the good. Why
then is there all this flutter and excitement about love? Because all men
and women at a certain age are desirous of bringing to the birth. And love
is not of beauty only, but of birth in beauty; this is the principle of