, is ready to argue before he
begins to speak. He expresses the very genius of the old comedy, its
coarse and forcible imagery, and the licence of its language in speaking
about the gods. He has no sophistical notions about love, which
is brought back by him to its common-sense meaning of love between
intelligent beings. His account of the origin of the sexes has the
greatest (comic) probability and verisimilitude. Nothing in Aristophanes
is more truly Aristophanic than the description of the human monster
whirling round on four arms and four legs, eight in all, with incredible
rapidity. Yet there is a mixture of earnestness in this jest; three
serious principles seem to be insinuated:--first, that man cannot exist
in isolation; he must be reunited if he is to be perfected: secondly,
that love is the mediator and reconciler of poor, divided human nature:
thirdly, that the loves of this world are an indistinct anticipation of
an ideal union which is not yet realized.

The speech of Agathon is conceived in a higher strain, and receives the
real, if half-ironical, approval of Socrates. It is the speech of the
tragic poet and a sort of poem, like tragedy, moving among the gods of
Olympus, and not among the elder or Orphic deities. In the idea of the
antiquity of love he cannot agree; love is not of the olden time, but
present and youthful ever. The speech may be compared with that speech
of Socrates in the Phaedrus in which he describes himself as talking
dithyrambs. It is at once a preparation for Socrates and a foil to him.
The rhetoric of Agathon elevates the soul to 'sunlit heights,' but at
the same time contrasts with the natural and necessary eloquence of
Socrates. Agathon contributes the distinction between love and the works
of love, and also hints incidentally that love is always of beauty,
which Socrates afterwards raises into a principle. While the
consciousness of discord is stronger in the comic poet Aristophanes,
Agathon, the tragic poet, has a deeper sense of harmony and
reconciliation, and speaks of Love as the creator and artist.

All the earlier speeches embody common opinions coloured with a tinge of
philosophy. They furnish the material out of which Socrates proceeds to
form his discourse, starting, as in other places, from mythology and
the opinions of men. From Phaedrus he takes the thought that love is
stronger than death; from Pausanias, that the true love is akin to
intellect and political activity