|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: represented as the inspiration of love is a conception that has already
become familiar to us in the Symposium, and is the expression partly of
Plato's enthusiasm for the idea, and is also an indication of the real
power exercised by the passion of friendship over the mind of the Greek.
The master in the art of love knew that there was a mystery in these
feelings and their associations, and especially in the contrast of the
sensible and permanent which is afforded by them; and he sought to explain
this, as he explained universal ideas, by a reference to a former state of
existence. The capriciousness of love is also derived by him from an
attachment to some god in a former world. The singular remark that the
beloved is more affected than the lover at the final consummation of their
|
