never the same; but each of them
individually 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 an
accomplished 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 all risks greater far than
they would have run for their children, and to spend money and undergo
any sort of 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 still survives 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.

'Those who are pregnant in the body only, betake themselves to women and
beget children--this is the character of their love; their offspring,
as they hope, will preserve their memory and giving them the blessedness
and immortality which they desire in the future. But souls which are
pregnant--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 contain. 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 an