In the Phaedrus and Symposium love is not
merely the feeling usually so called, but the mystical contemplation of the
beautiful and the good. The same passion which may wallow in the mire is
capable of rising to the loftiest heights--of penetrating the inmost secret
of philosophy. The highest love is the love not of a person, but of the
highest and purest abstraction. This abstraction is the far-off heaven on
which the eye of the mind is fixed in fond amazement. The unity of truth,
the consistency of the warring elements of the world, the enthusiasm for
knowledge when first beaming upon mankind, the relativity of ideas to the
human mind, and of the human mind to ideas, the faith in the invisible, the
adoration of the eternal nature, are all included, consciously or
unconsciously, in Plato's doctrine of love.
The successive speeches in praise of love are characteristic of the
speakers, and contribute in various degrees to the final result; they are
all designed to prepare the way for Socrates, who gathers up the threads
anew, and skims the highest points of each of them.
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