In the first place I consider it comical that every one loves, and every one wishes to love, without any one ever being able to tell one what is the nature of the lovable or that which is the real object of love. As to the word "to love" I shall not discuss it since it means nothing definite; but as soon as the matter is broached at all we are met by the question as to what it is one loves. No other answer is ever vouchsafed us on that point other than that one loves what is lovable. For if one should make answer, with Plato,[1] that one is to love what is good, one has in taking this single step exceeded the bounds of the erotic.
The answer may be offered, perhaps, that one is to love what is beautiful. But if I then should ask whether to love means to love a beautiful landscape or a beautiful painting it would be immediately perceived that the erotic is not, as it were, comprised in the more general term of the love of things beautiful, but is something entirely of its own kind. Were a lover — just to give an example — to speak as follows, in order to express adequately how much love there dwelled in him: "I love beautiful landscapes, and my Lalage, and the beautiful dancer, and a beautiful horse — in short, I love all that is beautiful," his Lalage would not be satisfied with his encomium, however well satisfied she might be with him in all other respects, and even if she be beautiful; and now suppose Lalage is not beautiful and he yet loved her!
Again, if I should refer the erotic element to the bisection of which Aristophanes tells us[2] when he says that the gods severed man into two parts as one cuts flounders, and that these parts thus separated sought one another, then I again encounter a difficulty I cannot get over, which is, in how far I may base my reasoning on Aristophanes who in his speech — just because there is no reason for the thought to stop at this point — goes further in his thought and thinks that the gods might take it into their heads to divide man into three parts, for the sake of still better fun. For the sake of still better fun; for is it not true, as I said, that love
