exceeding honor is paid by them to the devotion and virtue of love."

Agathon is even more eloquent--

Love "fills men with affection, and takes away their disaffection, making
them meet together at such banquets as these. In sacrifices, feasts,
dances, he is our lord--supplying kindness and banishing unkindness,
giving friendship and forgiving anmity, the joy of the good, the wonder of
the wise, the amazement of the gods, desired by those who have no part in
him, and precious to those who have the better part in him; parent of
delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace, regardful of the
good, regardless of the evil. In every word, work, wish, fear--pilot,
comrade, helper, savior; glory of gods and men, leader best and brightest:
in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in his honor that
sweet strain with which love charms the souls of gods and men."

No doubt, even so there are two Loves, "one, the daughter of Uranus, who
has no mother, and is the elder and wiser goddess; and the other, the
daughter of Zeus and Dione, who is popular and common,"--but let us not
examine too closely. Charity tells us even of Guinevere, "that while she
lived, she was a good lover and therefore she had a good end." [6]

The origin of love has exercised philosophers almost as much as the origin
of evil. The Symposium continues with a speech which Plato attributes in
joke to Aristophanes, and of which Jowett observes that nothing in
Aristophanes is more truly Aristophanic.

The original human nature, he says, was not like the present. The Primeval
Man was round, [7] his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four
hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set