tested, and the beloved should not be too ready to yield. The rule in our country is that the beloved may do the same service to the lover in the way of virtue which the lover may do to him.
A voluntary service to be rendered for the sake of virtue and wisdom is permitted among us ; and when these two customs — one the love of youth, the other the practice of virtue and phi- losophy—meet in one, then the lovers may lawfully unite. Nor is 185 there any disgrace to a disinterested lover in being deceived : but the interested lover is doubly disgraced, for if he loses his love he loses his character ; whereas the noble love of the other remains the same, although the object of his love is unworthy: for nothing can be nobler than love for the sake of virtue. This is that love of the heavenly goddess which is of great price to individuals and cities, making them work together for their improvement. The turn of Aristophanes comes next ; but he has the hiccough, and therefore proposes that Eryximachus the physician shall cure him or speak in his turn. Eryximachus is ready to do both, and after prescribing for the hiccough, speaks as follows:—186
He agrees with Pausanias in maintaining that there arc two kinds of love ; but his art has led him to the further conclusion that the empire of this double love extends over all things, and is to be found in animals and plants as well as in man. In the human body also there are two loves ; and the art of medicine shows which is the good and which is the bad love, and persuades the body to accept the good and reject the bad, and reconciles 187 conflicting elements and makes them friends. Every art, gym- nastic and husbandry as well as medicine, is the reconciliation of opposites ; and this is what Heracleitus meant, when he spoke of a harmony of opposites : but in strictness he should rather have spoken of a harmony which succeeds opposites, for an agreement of disagreements there cannot be. Music too is concerned with the principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm. In the abstract, all is simple, and we are not troubled with the twofold love ; but when they are applied in education with their accompaniments of song and metre, then the discord begins. Then the old tale has to be repeated of fair Urania and the coarse Polyhymnia, who must be indulged sparingly, just as in my own art of medicine care, must be taken that the taste of the epicure
