hrough the concrete to the abstract, and,
by different paths arriving, behold the vision of the eternal (compare
Symp. (Greek) Republic (Greek) also Phaedrus). Under one aspect 'the
idea is love'; under another, 'truth.' In both the lover of wisdom is
the 'spectator of all time and of all existence.' This is a 'mystery'
in which Plato also obscurely intimates the union of the spiritual and
fleshly, the interpenetration of the moral and intellectual faculties.

The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been
revealed; the Silenus, or outward man, has now to be exhibited.
The description of Socrates follows immediately after the speech of
Socrates; one is the complement of the other. At the height of divine
inspiration, when the force of nature can no further go, by way of
contrast to this extreme idealism, Alcibiades, accompanied by a troop of
revellers and a flute-girl, staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell
of things which he would have been ashamed to make known if he had been
sober. The state of his affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to
us and perverted as they appear, affords an illustration of the power
ascribed to the loves of man in the speech of Pausanias. He does not
suppose his feelings to be peculiar to himself: there are several other
persons in the company who have been equally in love with Socrates,
and like himself have been deceived by him. The singular part of this
confession is the combination of the most degrading passion with the
desire of virtue and improvement. Such an union is not wholly untrue to
human nature, which is capable of combining good and evil in a degree
beyond what we can easily conceive. In imaginative persons, especially,
the God and beast in man seem to part asunder more than is natural in
a well-regulated mind. The Platonic Socrates (for of the real Socrates
this may be doubted: compare his public rebuke of Critias for his
shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorabilia) does not regard
the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not to be spoken of; but it
has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp.), and is a subject for irony, no
less than for moral reprobation (compare Plato's Symp.). It is also used
as a figure of speech which no one interpreted literally (compare Xen.
Symp.). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such as would be felt in
modern times, at bringing his great master and hero into connexion with
nameless crimes. He is contented with