But our enquiry has at least satisfied us that the hope of iminor tality is a reasonable one. (To distrust it would be to call the foundation of our whole philosophy into question.) The discourse ends with an imaginative cosmological myth depicting the future of the just and the unjust respectively.
In this statement of the theory of Forms (Wat, €'16n) we may note the following points : (I) The doctrine is a piece of "realist" metaphysics. It is assumed that a universally predicated "general term" denotes or stands for an individual reality, apprehensible by thought, though not by sense. (2) There are a plurality of such Forms, standing in various logical relations with one another; whether they constitute a system with a definite structure the Phaedo does not tell us. (3) They are at once the objects known in all genuine science and the formal causes of all the temporal prdcesses of the sensible world. (4) The sensible things which have the same names as Forms are said to owe their character to their "participation" (uWEEt.$) of the Forms, or, equivalently, to the "presence" (rapovoia) or "communication" of the Forms to them. The precise character of this relation of "participation" is admitted to need further explanation. So far as the language of the Phaedo goes, a sensible thing would seem to be thought of as a temporary "complex" or meeting-place of universal char acters and as nothing more.
The argument of the Symposium cannot be reproduced here as a whole. The immediate object of the dialogue, which professes to record the discourses made in eulogy of Eros by a group of emi nent speakers at a banquet in honour of the tragic poet Agathon, in the year 416-5, is to find the highest manifestation of the "Love" which controls the world in the mystic aspiration after union with the eternal and super-cosmic Beauty, to depict Socrates as the type of the aspirant who has reached the goal of "union," and to set in sharp opposition to him the figure of Alcibiades, who has sold his spiritual birthright for the pleasures and ambi tions of the world. The centre of philosophical interest lies in
the discourse of Socrates, which he professes to have learned a quarter of a century ago from the priestess Diotima of Mantineia.' The main argument may be summarized thus. Eros, desirous love, in all its forms, is a reaching out of the soul to a good to which it aspires but has it not yet in possession. The desirous soul is not yet in fruition of good. It is on the way to fruition, just as the "philosopher" is not yet in possession of wisdom but is reaching out after it.
The object which awakens this desirous love in all its forms is Beauty, and Beauty is eternal. In its crudest form, love for a beautiful person is really a passion to beget offspring by that person and so to attain, by the perpetuation of one's stock, the succedaneum for immortality which is all the body can achieve. A more spiritual form of the same craving for eternity is the aspiration to win immortal fame by combining with a kindred soul to give birth to sound institutions and rules of life. Still more spiritual is the endeavour, in association with chosen minds, to enrich philosophy and science with "noble discourses and thoughts." But the goal still lies far ahead. When a man has followed the pilgrimage so far, he "suddenly descries" a Supreme Beauty which is the cause and source of all the beauties he has discerned so far. The true achievement of immortality is finally effected only by union with this. The philosopher's path thus culminates in a supreme "beatific vision." It is clear that the object of this vision, the "Beauty sole and eternal" of the dialogue, means what the Republic calls "the Good" or "Form of Good," which by its pres 'It is important to remember that Socrates professes to be repeating a lesson he had learned at about the age of 3o. This explains at once the words of Symposium 2ioa, where Diotima expresses uncertainty about Socrates' achievement of the complete "vision." He has his life yet to live what it will be is not revealed. That the words have gravely been interpreted as a claim on Plato's part to have transcended his Master's limitations is only one example of the perversity with which he has been misunderstood.