erhaps permit me to quote the classical expression of this
view as set forth in that ancient and wonderful conversation between
Socrates and the wise woman Diotima. Socrates asks: "What are they
doing who show all this eagerness and heat which is called love? And
what is the object they have in view? Answer me." Diotima replies: "I
will teach you. The object which they have in view is birth in beauty,
whether of body or soul.... For love, Socrates, is not as you imagine
the love of the beautiful only ... but the love of birth in beauty,
because to the mortal creature generation is a sort of eternity and
immortality."

To emphasize the eternal aspects of love is not of course an easy
undertaking, even if we follow the clue afforded by the heart of every
generous lover. His experience at least in certain moments tends to
pull him on and out from the passion for one to an enthusiasm for that
highest beauty and excellence of which the most perfect form is but an
inadequate expression. Even the most loutish tenement-house youth
vaguely feels this, and at least at rare intervals reveals it in his
talk to his "girl." His memory unexpectedly brings hidden treasures to
the surface of consciousness and he recalls the more delicate and
tender experiences of his childhood and earlier youth. "I remember the
time when my little sister died, that I rode out to the cemetery
feeling that everybody in Chicago had moved away from the town to
make room for that kid's funeral, everything was so darned lonesome
and yet it was kind of peaceful too." Or, "I never had a chance to go
into the country when I was a kid, but I remember one day when I had
to deliver a package way out on the West Side, that I saw a flock of
sheep in Douglas Park. I had never thought that a sheep could be
anywhere but in a picture, and when I saw those big white spots on the
green grass beginning to move and to turn into sheep, I felt exactly
as if Saint Cecilia had come out of her frame over the organ and was
walking in the park." Such moments come into the life of the most
prosaic youth living in the most crowded quarters of the cities. What
do we do to encourage and to solidify those moments, to make them come
true in our dingy towns, to give them expression in forms of art?

We not only fail in this undertaking but even debase existing forms of
art. We are informed by high authority that there is nothing in the
environment to which youth so keenly responds as to