of one form is akin to the
beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his
pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognise that the beauty in
every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this he will
abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a
small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the
next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more
honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous
soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend
him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may
improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the
beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of
them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; and
after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may
see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of
one youth or man or {141} institution, himself a slave mean and
narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of
beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in
boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes
strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science,
which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed;
please to give me your very best attention.

"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has
learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes
toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and
this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)--a nature
which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or
waxing and waning, in the next place not fair in one point of view and
foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place
fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul,
as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or
hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech
or knowledge, or existing in any other being; as for example, in an
animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place, but beauty
only, absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without
diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the
ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things