too often confined to one
kind of love. And Love desires not only the good, but the everlasting
possession of the good. Why then is there all this flutter and
excitement about love? Because all men and women at a certain age are
desirous of bringing to the birth. And love is not of beauty only, but
of birth in beauty; this is the principle of immortality in a mortal
creature. When beauty approaches, then the conceiving power is benign
and diffuse; when foulness, she is averted and morose.

But why again does this extend not only to men but also to animals?
Because they too have an instinct of immortality. Even in the same
individual there is a perpetual succession as well of the parts of the
material body as of the thoughts and desires of the mind; nay, even
knowledge comes and goes. There is no sameness of existence, but the new
mortality is always taking the place of the old. This is the reason why
parents love their children--for the sake of immortality; and this is
why men love the immortality of fame. For the creative soul creates not
children, but conceptions of wisdom and virtue, such as poets and other
creators have invented. And the noblest creations of all are those of
legislators, in honour of whom temples have been raised. Who would not
sooner have these children of the mind than the ordinary human ones?
(Compare Bacon's Essays, 8:--'Certainly the best works and of greatest
merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men;
which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public.')

I will now initiate you, she said, into the greater mysteries; for he
who would proceed in due course should love first one fair form, and
then many, and learn the connexion of them; and from beautiful bodies
he should proceed to beautiful minds, and the beauty of laws and
institutions, until he perceives that all beauty is of one kindred; and
from institutions he should go on to the sciences, until at last the
vision is revealed to him of a single science of universal beauty, and
then he will behold the everlasting nature which is the cause of all,
and will be near the end. In the contemplation of that supreme being of
love he will be purified of earthly leaven, and will behold beauty, not
with the bodily eye, but with the eye of the mind, and will bring forth
true creations of virtue and wisdom, and be the friend of God and heir
of immortality.

Such, Phaedrus, is the tale which I heard fr