through all the preparatory stages of education, which form a
rigorous discipline of the mind before it finally enters upon
dialectic. Thus all knowledge ends in dialectic, and that life has not
attained its end which falls short of philosophy.

Perhaps the most striking illustration of the subordination of all
spiritual activities to philosophy is to be found in the doctrine of
Eros, or Love. The phrase "platonic love" is on the lips of many, but,
as a rule, something very different from Plato's own doctrine is
meant. According to him, love is always concerned with beauty, and his
teaching on the subject is expounded {205} chiefly in the "Symposium,"
He believed that before birth the soul dwelt disembodied in the pure
contemplation of the world of Ideas. Sinking down into a body,
becoming immersed in the world of sense, it forgets the Ideas. The
sight of a beautiful object reminds it of that one Idea of beauty of
which the object is a copy. This accounts for the mystic rapture, the
emotion, the joy, with which we greet the sight of the beautiful.
Since Plato had expressly declared that there are Ideas of the ugly as
well as of the beautiful, that there are Ideas, for example, of hair,
filth, and dirt, and since these Ideas are just as divine and perfect
as the Idea of the beautiful, we ought, on this theory, to greet the
ugly, the filthy, and the nauseating, with a ravishment of joy similar
to that which we experience in the presence of beauty. Why this is not
the case Plato omitted to explain. However, having learned to love the
one beautiful object, the soul passes on to the love of others. Then
it perceives that it is the same beauty which reveals itself in all
these. It passes from the love of beautiful forms to the love of
beautiful souls, and from that to the love of beautiful sciences. It
ceases to be attached to the many objects, as such, that is to say, to
the sensuous envelopes of the Idea of beauty. Love passes into the
knowledge of the Idea of beauty itself, and from this to the knowledge
of the world of Ideas in general. It passes in fact into philosophy.

In this development there are two points which we cannot fail to note.
In the first place, emotional love is explained as being simply the
blind groping of reason towards the Idea. It is reason which has not
yet recognized itself as such. It appears, therefore, in the {206}
guise of feeling. Secondly, the later progress of the soul's love is
simply the