symposium   

Socrates, may enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the

crown of these, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit,

they will lead, I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I

will do my utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. For

he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to

visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor

aright, to love one such form only-out of that he should create fair

thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of

one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of

form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to

recognize that the beauty in every form is and the same! And when he

perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he

will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all

beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of

the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So

that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be

content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the

birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to

contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to

understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that

personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will

go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like

a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or

institution, himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing

towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create

many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of

wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the

vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of

beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed; please to give me your very

best attention:

"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and

who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when