of virtue and wisdom is
permitted among us; and when these two customs--one the love of youth,
the other the practice of virtue and philosophy--meet in one, then the
lovers may lawfully unite. Nor is there any disgrace to a disinterested
lover in being deceived: but the interested lover is doubly disgraced,
for if he loses his love he loses his character; whereas the noble
love of the other remains the same, although the object of his love is
unworthy: for nothing can be nobler than love for the sake of virtue.
This is that love of the heavenly goddess which is of great price to
individuals and cities, making them work together for their improvement.
The turn of Aristophanes comes next; but he has the hiccough, and
therefore proposes that Eryximachus the physician shall cure him
or speak in his turn. Eryximachus is ready to do both, and after
prescribing for the hiccough, speaks as follows:--
He agrees with Pausanias in maintaining that there are two kinds of
love; but his art has led him to the further conclusion that the empire
of this double love extends over all things, and is to be found in
animals and plants as well as in man. In the human body also there are
two loves; and the art of medicine shows which is the good and which is
the bad love, and persuades the body to accept the good and reject the
bad, and reconciles conflicting elements and makes them friends. Every
art, gymnastic and husbandry as well as medicine, is the reconciliation
of opposites; and this is what Heracleitus meant, when he spoke of a
harmony of opposites: but in strictness he should rather have spoken of
a harmony which succeeds opposites, for an agreement of disagreements
there cannot be. Music too is concerned with the principles of love in
their application to harmony and rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple,
and we are not troubled with the twofold love; but when they are applied
in education with their accompaniments of song and metre, then the
discord begins. Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and
the coarse Polyhymnia, who must be indulged sparingly, just as in my
own art of medicine care must be taken that the taste of the epicure be
gratified without inflicting upon him the attendant penalty of disease.
There is a similar harmony or disagreement in the course of the seasons
and in the relations of moist and dry, hot and cold, hoar frost and
blight; and diseases of all sorts spring from the excesses or disord
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