Sym- posium. Introduc- tion. The divine image of beauty which resides within Socrates has been revealed ; tlie Silenus, or outward man, has now to be ex- hibited. The description of Socrates follows immediately after the speech of Socrates ; one is the complement of the other. At the height of divine inspiration, when the force of nature can no further go, by way of contrast to this extreme idealism, Alci- biades, accompanied by a troop of revellers and a flute-girl, staggers in, and being drunk is able to tell of things which he would have been ashamed to make known if he had been sober. The state of his affections towards Socrates, unintelligible to us and perverted as they appear, affords an illustration of the power ascribed to the loves of man in the speech of Pausanias. He does not suppose his feelings to be pecuUar to himself: there are several other persons in the company who have been equally in love with Socrates, and like himself have been de- ceived by him. The singular part of this confession is the com- bination of the most degrading passion with the desire of virtue and improvement. Such an union is not wholly untrue to human nature, which is capable of combining good and evil in a degree beyond what we can easily conceive. In imaginative persons, especially, the God and beast in man seem to part asunder more than is natural in a well-regulated mind. The Platonic Socrates (for of the real Socrates this may be doubted : cp. his public rebuke of Critias for his shameful love of Euthydemus in Xenophon, Memorabilia i. 2, 29, 30) does not regard the greatest evil of Greek life as a thing not to be spoken of; but it has a ridiculous element (Plato's Symp. 214), and is a subject for irony, no less than for moral reprobation (cp. Plato's Symp. 218 D, E). It is also used as a figure of speech which no one interpreted literally (cp. Xen. Symp. 4. 57). Nor does Plato feel any repugnance, such as would be felt in modern times, at bringing his great master and hero into connexion with nameless crimes. He is contented with representing him as a saint, who has won 'the Olympian victory' over the temptations of human nature. The fault of taste, which to us is so glaring and which was recognized by the Greeks of a later age (Athenaeus xi. 114), was not perceived by Plato himself. We are still more surprised to find that the philoso- pher is incited to take the first step in his upward progress
