symposium   

take the infection of love, which begins with the desire of union;

whereto is added the care of offspring, on whose behalf the weakest

are ready to battle against the strongest even to the uttermost, and

to die for them, and will, let themselves be tormented with hunger

or suffer anything in order to maintain their young. Man may be

supposed to act thus from reason; but why should animals have these

passionate feelings? Can you tell me why?" Again I replied that I

did not know. She said to me: "And do you expect ever to become a

master in the art of love, if you do not know this?" "But I have

told you already, Diotima, that my ignorance is the reason why I

come to you; for I am conscious that I want a teacher; tell me then

the cause of this and of the other mysteries of love." "Marvel not,"

she said, "if you believe that love is of the immortal, as we have

several times acknowledged; for here again, and on the same

principle too, the mortal nature is seeking as far as is possible to

be everlasting and immortal: and this is only to be attained by

generation, because generation always leaves behind a new existence in

the place of the old. Nay even in the life, of the same individual

there is succession and not absolute unity: a man is called the

same, and yet in the short interval which elapses between youth and

age, and in which every animal is said to have life and identity, he

is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and reparation-hair,

flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are always changing. Which

is true not only of the body, but also of the soul, whose habits,

tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain

the same in any one of us, but are always coming and going; and

equally true of knowledge, and what is still more surprising to us

mortals, not only do the sciences in general spring up and decay, so

that in respect of them we are 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