ht speak of the 'fruitio Dei;' as
Dante saw all things contained in his love of Beatrice, so Plato would
have us absorb all other loves and desires in the love of knowledge.
Here is the beginning of Neoplatonism, or rather, perhaps, a proof (of
which there are many) that the so-called mysticism of the East was
not strange to the Greek of the fifth century before Christ. The first
tumult of the affections was not wholly subdued; there were longings of
a creature moving about in worlds not realized, which no art could
satisfy. To most men reason and passion appear to be antagonistic both
in idea and fact. The union of the greatest comprehension of knowledge
and the burning intensity of love is a contradiction in nature, which
may have existed in a far-off primeval age in the mind of some Hebrew
prophet or other Eastern sage, but has now become an imagination only.
Yet this 'passion of the reason' is the theme of the Symposium of Plato.
And as there is no impossibility in supposing that 'one king, or son of
a king, may be a philosopher,' so also there is a probability that there
may be some few--perhaps one or two in a whole generation--in whom the
light of truth may not lack the warmth of desire. And if there be such
natures, no one will be disposed to deny that 'from them flow most of
the benefits of individuals and states;' and even from imperfect
combinations of the two elements in teachers or statesmen great good may
often arise.

Yet there is a higher region in which love is not only felt, but
satisfied, in the perfect beauty of eternal knowledge, beginning with
the beauty of earthly things, and at last reaching a beauty in which
all existence is seen to be harmonious and one. The limited affection
is enlarged, and enabled to behold the ideal of all things. And here the
highest summit which is reached in the Symposium is seen also to be the
highest summit which is attained in the Republic, but approached from
another side; and there is 'a way upwards and downwards,' which is the
same and not the same in both. The ideal beauty of the one is the ideal
good of the other; regarded not with the eye of knowledge, but of faith
and desire; and they are respectively the source of beauty and the
source of good in all other things. And by the steps of a 'ladder
reaching to heaven' we pass from images of visible beauty (Greek), and
from the hypotheses of the Mathematical sciences, which are not yet
based upon the idea of good, t