[The passage is thus summarized by Jowett: 'He who would be truly
initiated should pass from the concrete to the abstract, from the
individual to the universal, from the universal to the universe of
truth and beauty. [Footnote: Plato, _Symposium_. _The Dialogues
of Plato, translated by Jowett, New York, Oxford University Press,
1892, 1. 580-582.]]

_Diotima_.... These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which
even you, Socrates, may enter; to the greater and more hidden ones
which are the crown of these, and to which, if you pursue them in a
right spirit, they will lead, I know not whether you will be able to
attain. But I will do my utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you
can. He who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth
to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor
aright, to love one such form only--out of that he should create fair
thoughts. And soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one
form is akin to the beauty of another; and then, if beauty of form in
general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that
the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceives
this, he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise
and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms.
In the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more
honorable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous
soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend
him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may
improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the
beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of
them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle. And
after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may