; from Eryximachus, that love is a
universal phenomenon and the great power of nature; from Aristophanes,
that love is the child of want, and is not merely the love of the
congenial or of the whole, but (as he adds) of the good; from Agathon,
that love is of beauty, not however of beauty only, but of birth
in beauty. As it would be out of character for Socrates to make a
lengthened harangue, the speech takes the form of a dialogue between
Socrates and a mysterious woman of foreign extraction. She elicits the
final truth from one who knows nothing, and who, speaking by the lips
of another, and himself a despiser of rhetoric, is proved also to be the
most consummate of rhetoricians (compare Menexenus).

The last of the six discourses begins with a short argument which
overthrows not only Agathon but all the preceding speakers by the help
of a distinction which has escaped them. Extravagant praises have been
ascribed to Love as the author of every good; no sort of encomium was
too high for him, whether deserved and true or not. But Socrates has no
talent for speaking anything but the truth, and if he is to speak the
truth of Love he must honestly confess that he is not a good at all: for
love is of the good, and no man can desire that which he has. This
piece of dialectics is ascribed to Diotima, who has already urged
upon Socrates the argument which he urges against Agathon. That the
distinction is a fallacy is obvious; it is almost acknowledged to be so
by Socrates himself. For he who has beauty or good may desire more of
them; and he who has beauty or good in himself may desire beauty and
good in others. The fallacy seems to arise out of a confusion between
the abstract ideas of good and beauty, which do not admit of degrees,
and their partial realization in individuals.

But Diotima, the prophetess of Mantineia, whose sacred and superhuman
character raises her above the ordinary proprieties of women, has taught
Socrates far more than this about the art and mystery of love. She has
taught him that love is another aspect of philosophy. The same want in
the human soul which is satisfied in the vulgar by the procreation of
children, may become the highest aspiration of intellectual desire.
As the Christian might speak of hungering and thirsting after
righteousness; or of divine loves under the figure of human (compare
Eph. 'This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the
church'); as the mediaeval saint mig