ausanias came to a pause—this is the balanced way in
which I have been taught by the wise to speak; and Aristodemus said
that the turn of Aristophanes was next, but either he had eaten too
much, or from some other cause he had the hiccough, and was obliged
to change turns with Eryximachus the physician, who was reclining
on the couch below him. Eryximachus, he said, you ought either to
stop my hiccough, or to speak in my turn until I have left off.
I will do both, said Eryximachus: I will speak in your turn, and
do you speak in mine; and while I am speaking let me recommend you
to hold your breath, and if after you have done so for some time
the hiccough is no better, then gargle with a little water; and if
it still continues, tickle your nose with something and sneeze; and
if you sneeze once or twice, even the most violent hiccough is sure
to go. I will do as you prescribe, said Aristophanes, and now get
on.
Eryximachus spoke as follows: Seeing that Pausanias made a fair
beginning, and but a lame ending, I must endeavour to supply his
deficiency. I think that he has rightly distinguished two kinds of
love. But my art further informs me that the double love is not
merely an affection of the soul of man towards the fair, or towards
anything, but is to be found in the bodies of all animals and in
productions of the earth, and I may say in all that is; such is the
conclusion which I seem to have gathered from my own art of
medicine, whence I learn how great and wonderful and universal is
the deity of love, whose empire extends over all things, divine as
well as human. And from medicine I will begin that I may do honour
to my art. There are in the human body these two kinds of love,
which are confessedly different and unlike, and being unlike, they
have loves and desires which are unlike; and the desire of the
healthy is one, and the desire of the diseased is another; and as
Pausanias was just now saying that to indulge good men is
honourable, and bad men dishonourable:—so too in the body the
good and healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements
and the elements of disease are not to be indulged, but
discouraged. And this is what the physician has to do, and in this
the art of medicine consists: for medicine may be regarded
generally as the knowledge of the loves and desires of the body,
and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician is he who is
able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into the
other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love,
whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements
in the constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful
practitioner. Now the most hostile are the most opposite, such as
hot and cold, bitter and sweet, moist and dry, and the like. And my
ancestor, Asclepius, knowing how to implant friendship and accord
in these elements, was the creator of our art, as our friends the
poets here tell us, and I believe them; and not only medicine in
every branch but the arts of gymnastic and husbandry are under his
dominion. Any one who pays the least attention to the subject will
also perceive that in music there is the same reconciliation of
opposites; and I suppose that this must have been the meaning of
Heracleitus, although his words are not accurate; for he says that
The One is united by disunion, like the harmony of the bow and the
lyre. Now there is an absurdity saying that harmony is discord or
is composed of elements which are still in a state of discord. But
what he probably meant was, that harmony is composed of differing
notes of higher or lower pitch which disagreed once, but are now
reconciled by the art of music; for if the higher and lower notes
still disagreed, there could be no harmony,—clearly not. For
harmony is a symphony, and symphony is an agreement; but an
agreement of disagreements while they disagree there cannot be; you
cannot harmonize that which disagrees. In like manner rhythm is
compounded of elements short and long, once differing and now in
accord; which accordance, as in the former instance, medicine, so
in all these other cases, music implants, making love and unison to
grow up among them; and thus music, too, is concerned with the
principles of love in their application to harmony and rhythm.
Again, in the essential nature of harmony and rhythm there is no
difficulty in discerning love which has not yet become double. But
when you want to use them in actual life, either in the composition
of songs or in the correct performance of airs or metres composed
already, which latter is called education, then the difficulty
begins, and the good artist is needed. Then the old tale has to be
repeated of fair and heavenly love—the love of Urania the
fair and heavenly muse, and of the duty of accepting the temperate,
and those who are as yet intemperate only that they may become
temperate, and of preserving their love; and again, of the vulgar
Polyhymnia, who must be used with circumspection that the pleasure
be enjoyed, but may not generate licentiousness; just as in my own
art it is a great matter so to regulate the desires of the epicure
that he may gratify his tastes without the attendant evil of
disease. Whence I infer that in music, in medicine, in all other
things human as well as divine, both loves ought to be noted as far
as may be, for they are both present.
The course of the seasons is also full of both these principles;
and when, as I was saying, the elements of hot and cold, moist and
dry, attain the harmonious love of one another and blend in
temperance and harmony, they bring to men, animals, and plants
health and plenty, and do them no harm; whereas the wanton love,
getting the upper hand and affecting the seasons of the year, is
very destructive and injurious, being the source of pestilence, and
bringing many other kinds of diseases on animals and plants; for
hoar-frost and hail and blight spring from the excesses and
disorders of these elements of love, which to know in relation to
the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and the seasons of the year
is termed astronomy. Furthermore all sacrifices and the whole
province of divination, which is the art of communion between gods
and men—these, I say, are concerned only with the
preservation of the good and the cure of the evil love. For all
manner of impiety is likely to ensue if, instead of accepting and honouring and reverencing the harmonious love in all his actions, a
man honours the other love, whether in his feelings towards gods or
parents, towards the living or the dead. Wherefore the business of
divination is to see to these loves and to heal them, and
divination is the peacemaker of gods and men, working by a
knowledge of the religious or irreligious tendencies which exist in
human loves. Such is the great and mighty, or rather omnipotent
force of love in general. And the love, more especially, which is
concerned with the good, and which is perfected in company with
temperance and justice, whether among gods or men, has the greatest
power, and is the source of all our happiness and harmony, and
makes us friends with the gods who are above us, and with one
another. I dare say that I too have omitted several things which
might be said in praise of Love, but this was not intentional, and
you, Aristophanes, may now supply the omission or take some other
line of commendation; for I perceive that you are rid of the
hiccough.
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