enquire into the nature
and power of love. For this is a necessary preliminary to the other
question--How is the non-lover to be distinguished from the lover? In
all of us there are two principles--a better and a worse--reason and
desire, which are generally at war with one another; and the victory
of the rational is called temperance, and the victory of the irrational
intemperance or excess. The latter takes many forms and has many bad
names--gluttony, drunkenness, and the like. But of all the irrational
desires or excesses the greatest is that which is led away by desires
of a kindred nature to the enjoyment of personal beauty. And this is the
master power of love.

Here Socrates fancies that he detects in himself an unusual flow
of eloquence--this newly-found gift he can only attribute to the
inspiration of the place, which appears to be dedicated to the nymphs.
Starting again from the philosophical basis which has been laid down, he
proceeds to show how many advantages the non-lover has over the lover.
The one encourages softness and effeminacy and exclusiveness; he cannot
endure any superiority in his beloved; he will train him in luxury, he
will keep him out of society, he will deprive him of parents, friends,
money, knowledge, and of every other good, that he may have him all to
himself. Then again his ways are not ways of pleasantness; he is mighty
disagreeable; 'crabbed age and youth cannot live together.' At every
hour of the night and day he is intruding upon him; there is the
same old withered face and the remainder to match--and he is always
repeating, in season or out of season, the praises or dispraises of his
beloved, which are bad enough when he is sober, and published all over
the world when he is drunk. At length his love ceases; he is converted
into an enemy, and the spectacle may be seen of the lover running away
from the beloved, who pursues him with vain reproaches, and demands
his reward which the other refuses to pay. Too late the beloved learns,
after all his pains and disagreeables, that 'As wolves love lambs so
lovers love their loves.' (Compare Char.) Here is the end; the 'other'
or 'non-lover' part of the speech had better be understood, for if in
the censure of the lover Socrates has broken out in verse, what will
he not do in his praise of the non-lover? He has said his say and is
preparing to go away.

Phaedrus begs him to remain, at any rate until the heat of noon has
passed; he would