symposium   

of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment. Suppose

Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying

side, by side and to say to them, "What do you people want of one

another?" they would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that

when he saw their perplexity he said: "Do you desire to be wholly one;

always day and night to be in one another's company? for if this is

what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow

together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live a

common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the

world below still be one departed soul instead of two-I ask whether

this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to

attain this?"-there is not a man of them who when he heard the

proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and

melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the

very expression of his ancient need. And the reason is that human

nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and

pursuit of the whole is called love. There was a time, I say, when

we were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has

dispersed us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the

Lacedaemonians. And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a

danger that we shall be split up again and go about in

basso-relievo, like the profile figures having only half a nose

which are sculptured on monuments, and that we shall be like tallies.

Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that we may avoid evil,

and obtain the good, of which Love is to us the lord and minister; and

let no one oppose him-he is the enemy of the gods who oppose him.

For if we are friends of the God and at peace with him we shall find

our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world at present. I

am serious, and therefore I must beg Eryximachus not to make fun or to

find any allusion in what I am saying to Pausanias and Agathon, who,

as I suspect, are both of the manly nature, and belong to the class

which I have been describing. But my words have a wider