dividually experiences a like change. For what is implied in the
word 'recollection,' but the departure of knowledge, which is ever
being forgotten and is renewed and preserved by recollection, and
appears to be the same although in reality new, according to that law
of succession by which all mortal things are preserved, not absolutely
the same, but by substitution, the old worn-out mortality leaving
another new and similar existence behind--unlike the divine, which is
always the same and not another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal
body, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality; but the immortal in
another way. Marvel not then at the love which all men have of their
offspring; for that universal love and interest is for the sake of
immortality."

I was astonished at her words, and said: "Is this really true, O thou
wise Diotima?" And she answered with all the authority of a sophist:
"Of that, Socrates, you may be assured;--think only of the ambition of
men, and you will wonder at the senselessness of their ways, unless you
consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame.
They are ready to run risks greater far than they would have run for
their children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of {139} toil,
and even to die for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall
be eternal. Do you imagine that Alcestis would have died to save
Admetus, or Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your own Codrus in order
to preserve the kingdom for his sons, if they had not imagined that the
memory of their virtues, which is still retained among us, would be
immortal? Nay," she said, "I am persuaded that all men do all things,
and the better they are the more they do them, in hope of the glorious
fame of immortal virtue; for they desire the immortal.

"They whose bodies only are creative, betake themselves to women and
beget children--this is the character of their love; their offspring,
as they hope, will preserve their memory and give them the blessedness
and immortality which they desire in the future. But creative
souls--for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls
than in their bodies--conceive that which is proper for the soul to
conceive or retain. And what are these conceptions?--wisdom and virtue
in general. And such creators are poets and all artists who are
deserving of the name inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of
wisdom by far is that which is con