[202a]
“‘To be sure I do.’“‘And what is not skilled, ignorant? Have you not observed that there is something halfway between skill and ignorance?’“‘What is that?’“‘You know, of course, that to have correct opinion, if you can give no reason for it, is neither full knowledge—how can an unreasoned thing be knowledge?—nor yet ignorance; for what hits on the truth cannot be ignorance. So correct opinion, I take it, is just in that position, between understanding and ignorance.’“‘Quite true,’ I said.
[202b]
“‘Then do not compel what is not beautiful to be ugly,’ she said, ‘or what is not good to be bad. Likewise of Love, when you find yourself admitting that he is not good nor beautiful, do not therefore suppose he must be ugly and bad, but something betwixt the two.’“‘And what of the notion,’ I asked, ‘to which every one agrees, that he is a great god?’“‘Every one? People who do not know,’ she rejoined, ‘or those who know also?’“‘I mean everybody in the world.’
[202c]
“At this she laughed and said, ‘But how, Socrates, can those agree that he is a great god who say he is no god at all?’“‘What persons are they?’ I asked.“‘You are one,’ she replied, ‘and I am another.’“‘How do you make that out?’ I said.“‘Easily,’ said she; ‘tell me, do you not say that all gods are happy and beautiful? Or will you dare to deny that any god is beautiful and happy?’“‘Bless me!’ I exclaimed, ‘not I.’“‘And do you not call those happy who possess good and beautiful things?’
[202d]
“‘Certainly I do.’“‘But you have admitted that Love, from lack of good and beautiful things, desires these very things that he lacks.’“‘Yes, I have.’“‘How then can he be a god, if he is devoid of things beautiful and good?’“‘By no means, it appears.’“‘So you see,’ she said, ‘you are a person who does not consider Love to be a god.’“‘What then,’ I asked, ‘can Love be? A mortal?’“‘Anything but that.’
[202e]
“‘Well what?’“‘As I previously suggested, between a mortal and an immortal.’“‘And what is that, Diotima?’“‘A great spirit, Socrates: for the whole of the spiritual1 is between divine and mortal.’“‘Possessing what power?’ I asked.“‘Interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above: being midway between, it makes each to supplement the other, so that the whole is combined in one. Through it are conveyed all divination and priestcraft concerning sacrifice and ritual
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 9 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1925.
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