Note 38 — Chapter III · GENIUS

In the passage which follows some use has been made of Jowett's translation. It is noticeable that this utterance, unsurpassed among the utterances of antiquity, has been placed by Plato in the mouth of a woman—the prophetess Diotima—with the express intention, as I think, of generalising it, and of raising it above the region of sexual passion. There is nothing else in antiquity resembling the position thus ascribed to Diotima in reference to Socrates,—the woman being represented as capable of raising the highest and of illumining the wisest soul.