“‘But,’ I said, ‘love is confessed by all to be a great God.’--‘Do you mean, when you say all, all those who know, or those who know not, what they say?’--‘All collectively.’--‘And how can that be, Socrates?’ said she laughing; ‘how can he be acknowledged to be a great God, by those who assert that he is not even a God at all?’--‘And who are they?’ I said--‘You for one, and I for another.’--‘How can you say that, Diotima?’--‘Easily,’ she replied, ‘and with truth; for tell me, do you not own that all the Gods are beautiful and happy? or will you presume to maintain that any God is otherwise?’--‘By Jupiter, not I!’--‘Do you not call those alone happy who possess all things that are beautiful and good?’--‘Certainly.’--‘You have confessed that Love, through his desire for things beautiful and good, possesses not those materials of happiness.’--‘Indeed such was my concession.’--‘But how can we conceive a God to be without the possession of what is beautiful and good?’--‘In no manner, I confess.’--‘Observe, then, that you do not consider Love to be a God.’--‘What, then,’ I said, ‘is Love a mortal?’--‘By no means.’--‘But what, then?’--‘Like those things which I have before instanced, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but something intermediate.’--‘What is that, O Diotima?’--‘A great dæmon, Socrates; and everything dæmoniacal holds an intermediate place between what is divine and what is mortal.’ “‘What is his power and nature?’ I inquired.--‘He interprets and makes a communication between divine and human things, conveying the prayers and sacrifices of men to the Gods, and communicating the commands and directions concerning the mode of worship most pleasing to them, from Gods to men. He fills up that intermediate space between these two classes of beings, so as to bind together, by his own power, the whole universe of things. Through him subsist all divination, and the science of sacred things as it relates to sacrifices, and expiations, and disenchantments, and prophecy, and magic. The divine nature cannot immediately communicate with what is human, but all that intercourse and converse which is conceded by the Gods to men, both whilst they sleep and when they wake, subsists through the intervention of Love; and he who is wise in the science of this intercourse is supremely happy, and participates in the dæmoniacal nature; whilst he who is wise in any other science or art, remains a mere ordinary slave. These dæmons are, indeed, many and various, and one of them is Love.’