Aristophanes.The strong presentiment which lovers have of they know not what.
562 The desire of 7'eunion. Sym- only in obedience to the law; but they are satisfied if they fosium. j^j^y jjg allowed to live with one another unwedded ; and Aristo- such a nature is prone to love and ready to return love, PHANES. ^ J 1 _. always embracing that which is akin to him. And when one presenti- of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, ment which ■^yhgther he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, lovers have . . •' ,r.,i. of they the pair are lost m an amazement of love and inendship know not aj-,(] intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment : these are the people who pass their whole lives together ; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment. Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to them, ' What do you people want of one another?' they would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said : ' Do you desire to be wholly one ; always day and night to be in one another's company ? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of two — I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to attain this?' — there is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need'. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love. 193 There was a time, I say, when we were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedae- Worse may monians ^. And if we are not obedient to the gods, there men unless ^■ ^ danger that we shall be split up again and go about ' Cp. Arist. Pol. ii. 4, § 6. - Cp. Arist. Pol. ii. 2, § ?,.
